NWS Reporting Phone Number Overlay for Street Atlas

Bill Tabor

Bill Tabor

EF5
Joined
Apr 16, 2004
Messages
1,613
Location
Austin, Tx
Whew! So much for quick little project. This has had me working solid for 2 or 3 days since I thought of it. However it appears to be complete now. Here is the link to download your very own National Weather Service phone number overlay which will (attempt) to plot the appropriate NWS reporting contact number to the counties which they are responsible for (CWA).
http://www.tornadoxtreme.com/SANWSphone.htm

Check the link, as I of course have disclaimers and assume no responsibility for the use of this information. This is something I created for my personal use and decided it would be good for other chasers to have access to as well. At the same time while I can't guarantee accuracy I have labored to make it as accurate as I could without corrupting the original information given me.

It is my hope that this will make it easier for chasers in remote areas to know the appropriate phone number to use while calling in reports of severe weather.

The reporting numbers are originally from Chris Novy as provided by NWS contacts and do not cover all the US, but do cover a large majority of chaseable areas.

Chris, while I have placed this page on my website it is not tied or linked to other pages and therefore I believe it should not be spidered by search engines which should keep it pseudo private still. So far I can't think of a better way to provide it. Everyone hold on to this email, because it is the only way to find the link to this file.

Note this file was set up for use with Street Atlas but can probably be used with other GPS mapping applications as well. Also, I have tried the County names overlay that Chris mentioned and it is very useful and I believe compliments the NWS phone number overlay. I recommend you install both. I have provided the link for County names overlay off this web page link as well.

I hope some of you give this a try and like it. It was some work, but worth it if any of us find a good use for it. Let me know what you think about it and how it works out for you. :lol:
 
Hey - a few final comments here that I forgot about.

Everything is in the database now, so creating new overlays based on the data I have is relatively
straightforward and quick. Some attributes that I have and could be plotted but have not (in
addition to county and nws phone number) are:

WFO - NWS WFO for a reporting office such as EWX for Austin/San Antonio.

Office name - would appear as example "Austin/San Antonio".

Square Miles - square miles for a particular county. Note: I didn't keep all of these.

State - self explanatory

Portion - I suppose this tells if the WFO responsibility is for the whole county or just a portion
and give which portion.

FIPS - I believe these are the codes which can be plugged into a NOAA weather radio to get /
discrimate on which counties to receive warnings for. I kept about 98% of these.

Anyway, if anyone needs this info let me know and I can probably shoot a file to you. These can be
provided for just those WFO offices in Chris's list or for all offices in the country.

*** Important - if any NWS offices wish to be added to this database and Street Atlas overlay please
contact Chris Novy for submission. I'll only include those office's information that meets Chris's
submission criteria as described in his previous email on 2005 Reporting Numbers. Please do not
contact me directly.

Thanks,
 
Thanks for sharing all your hard work with us Bill. I have already loaded it up and really like it. It will definatly save time looking through my notebook wondering if I have the right number or not.

Thanks again,
Dan
 
Chris, while I have placed this page on my website it is not tied or linked to other pages and therefore I believe it should not be spidered by search engines which should keep it pseudo private still. So far I can't think of a better way to provide it. Everyone hold on to this email, because it is the only way to find the link to this file.
Click to expand...

Bots may find every accessible page in a domain. Certain embedded (meta-tag?) commands and such can help; however, the information is still going to be compromised. I know that many WCMs are very reluctant to have the 800#s too widely dispersed, especially publicly to just anyone and on the internet. Some of them only provide the numbers if they are assured that it will only be disseminated among spotters and chasers. NWSFO's limited lines are often tied up as it is. Other than possible telemarketers farming numbers, I figure the chances of Joe Sixpakus looking to call for a forecast, to complain, or make a drunken report is fairly small, but then again it could be provided be someone else that has access.

Point is, the information isn't protected, and I'm sure some offices only provided the numbers with assurances that only people with the where-with-all to provide useful reports would have access to it. This includes by and large the WX-CHASE community, and the web archives of that list are password protected. The text in the WX-CHASE list is *very* explicit that the numbers should not be publicly distributed. Of course, if Chris said it's ok, then all of this is largely moot. Perhaps you could password protect the database file and provide that username and pass in an email (and on here)?

At any rate, thanks for the sizable effort Bill, the CWA county mapped numbers certainly can be very useful!

Scott
 
Chris, while I have placed this page on my website it is not tied or linked to other pages and therefore I believe it should not be spidered by search engines which should keep it pseudo private still. So far I can't think of a better way to provide it. Everyone hold on to this email, because it is the only way to find the link to this file.
Click to expand...

Bots may find every accessible page in a domain. Certain embedded (meta-tag?) commands and such can help; however, the information is still going to be compromised. I know that many WCMs are very reluctant to have the 800#s too widely dispersed, especially publicly to just anyone and on the internet. Some of them only provide the numbers if they are assured that it will only be disseminated among spotters and chasers. NWSFO's limited lines are often tied up as it is. Other than possible telemarketers farming numbers, I figure the chances of Joe Sixpakus looking to call for a forecast, to complain, or make a drunken report is fairly small, but then again it could be provided be someone else that has access.

Point is, the information isn't protected, and I'm sure some offices only provided the numbers with assurances that only people with the where-with-all to provide useful reports would have access to it. This includes by and large the WX-CHASE community, and the web archives of that list are password protected. The text in the WX-CHASE list is *very* explicit that the numbers should not be publicly distributed. Of course, if Chris said it's ok, then all of this is largely moot. Perhaps you could password protect the database file and provide that username and pass in an email (and on here)?

At any rate, thanks for the sizable effort Bill, the CWA county mapped numbers certainly can be very useful!

Scott
Click to expand...

I've expressed my same concerns... On one hand, thanks Bill for putting this very useful resource together! On the other hand, I'm not sure this is the intended distribution method, and I'm wary that it goes against the premise that this information stay private, a premise that some WCMs (and Chris Novy) stated explicity...
 
You can hide files from spiders by putting a file called 'robots.txt' in your root directory. It can be set to tell search engine bots to ignore files or even whole directories. I can verify that it works, I have pages that never get google hits that used to before I put the robots.txt in a couple of years ago.
Info on how to set it up (I used notepad):
http://www.searchengineworld.com/robots/ro...ts_tutorial.htm
 
Ah, yes. I had forgotten about the explicit instructions concerning the publication of the numbers. I would agree that a password protected page would be the only fair way to do it.
 
I asked Chris Novy if he thought posting it to Stormtrack and my web page was ok, and he said it was cool. The actual file doesn't directly relate an nws office with a phone number. Instead it only provides latitude and longitude with phone number. That is to most folk a bit of code, and most people would never go to the trouble to decode to find the relationship.

Also, someone sent me the robots.txt meta code and I added it to the web page - so now spider should leave it alone.

Glad you folks like it & hope you get some good use out of it as that is what motivated me to do it.
 
Great! Glad you folks are liking it. Remember it should work with any versions of Street Atlas that support Draw layers. It should probably be possible to import into other software such as Microsoft Streets and Trips, but I haven't tried, and don't know the procedure.

A few new NWS WCM's have contacted me with their office's number. I may add that as an updated file soon.
 
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