Warnings not displaying for KLSX in GR2Analyst

[Alex Elmore]

During the night of 4/30, I noticed that as a severe- and tornado-warned bow echo moved out of Springfield, MO NWS' area into St. Louis, MO NWS' area that the warnings dropped off while using GR2Analyst. Thinking that didn't look right, I pulled up RadarScope on my phone to see that St. Louis had continued to warn on the storm, but the warnings weren't showing up in GR2. Seeing as I use the COD server for warnings in GR2 and Allison House for warnings in RadarScope, I just assumed there was some sort of data feed issue with the COD server. While annoying, I didn't give it much more thought that evening.

Yesterday evening (5/2), I wanted to review the supercell that occurred just to the northeast of St. Louis during the afternoon of 4/30 through archived radar data in GR2. I downloaded the KLSX Level2 data from the Amazon NEXRAD server (NEXRAD on AWS ) and upon loading it into GR2, noticed that warnings weren't showing up again in the St. Louis area, but showed up in Springfield, MO and Lincoln, IL NWS' area. I even downloaded Level2 data from KILX to see if the St. Louis warnings would show up from that site's data, but they did not. I would like to think that the warning data should be in the archived data and not server dependent like it would be if I was viewing it live, but I could be wrong.

I used the same archived data in GR2 on a different computer and experience the same issue. I spoke with others who were viewing the event live through GR2 and some of them had KLSX warnings while others didn't. Did anyone else notice this if they were using GR2 or GR3, or has anyone experienced this issue before? It does not seem to be unique to my computer or copy of GR2, and it does not seem to matter whether I'm viewing live or archived data.

 

[Randy Jennings]

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think warnings are available from either of the sources of archive radar data (NCDC or AWS). As you note in real-time they come from different servers than the radar data. They also aren't listed in the NCDC product list (NEXRAD Products | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) formerly known as National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)) As for your original problem, myself and several others have had issues with GR products displaying warnings this year. In every case I am aware of going to the owner's forum and getting the latest GR update and installing it fixed our problem.

 

[Jeff Duda]

Agree with Randy's last point - make sure you are keeping up-to-date on your GR software. Updates still come out periodically.

 

[Mark Blue]

@Alex Elmore see here: GRLevelX.com Owner Forum • Index page. The previous link is to the owners forum for GRLX products, which has the most recent updates for each program you own. If your AH subscription has the placefiles for warnings data I’d use that over COD, because on a busy day the free product server will usually get overwhelmed faster than the one you pay for. This is more of a general rule of thumb than a definitive answer as to what happened to you, but as long as you have AH I’d utilize it first!

 

[rdale]

NWS offices are slowly moving to mixed (upper/lower) case warnings. Older versions of GR software cannot handle them.

 

[Alex Elmore]

Thanks for pointing out the owner's forum. I have requested access to it, so hopefully I'm able to get the latest update soon and that'll fix things. It does appear that I'm at least an update or two behind. UPDATE: I was granted access quicker than expected, and updating the latest version seems to have allowed me to now see KLSX warnings in real time and when viewing archived data.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think warnings are available from either of the sources of archive radar data (NCDC or AWS). As you note in real-time they come from different servers than the radar data. They also aren't listed in the NCDC product list (NEXRAD Products | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) formerly known as National Climatic Data Center (NCDC))

You are correct in that warnings don't appear to be listed in the NCDC product list, but they've always appeared in GR2 when I've downloaded Level2 data from either the NCEI NEXRAD or AWS site.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I'm having this problem now in GRLevel3. No warnings at all. Was set to Topeka then Wichita radar sites.

 

[rdale]

Are you using v2.80 or greater? What warning server? Can you access that warning server from your browser?

 

[TJKLECKNER]

I had the same problem with v2.80 and warnings. I just reinstalled GRLevel3 and fixed the problem.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I downloaded the latest version straight from the web site yesterday during my gps issue.

 

[rdale]

What warning server? Can you access that warning server from a regular browser?