WDSS-II For Google Earth

[Bill Tabor]

What's the latest on Warning Decision Support System-II (WDSS-II) for Google Earth? Are any of you using it? Thoughts?

To me it seems somewhat nifty, but it always seems like lots of the products are unavailable. Like right now I can't get many of the radar products such as Hail Swath to load. It's cool when it works. I remember checking it once after a big hail storm hit San Marcos with a friend of mine's wife driving nearby. It was very accurate considering the hail size, damage, etc.

I've never been able to get rotation tracks to work (that I recall) and this is disappointing. All of us chasers love to wander the damage paths the day after just to see what we see (assuming it's not in an urban area hindering emergency services). Anyone else ever get this to work?

Are there any other updates for this I don't know about? Anyone know any nifty details or hints about using it?

I note that with the Plus version (I believe) you can plot your gps location on the map. That could be handy for rotation tracks / hail swaths etc.

 

[rdale]

GE just isn't the way to display radar data... The data itself is excellent, it's just not the best means of incorporating it into a chase or forecast decision.

 

[Bill Tabor]

Yep, I agree with the chase / forecast point you bring up. I just use it for fun currently though. Like I say...looking at Vil's, hail swath, rotation tracks.

 

[Bill Tabor]

Oh, also this WDSS Google Earth thing may be a cool way to document a chase using archival information. Imagine being able to show the storm and features along with your gps trail and perhaps segments of clickable video or photos taken at a particular location. Seems I recall perhaps someone used Google Earth for such an endeavor at a chaser seminar / presentation. I never saw it, but read about it.

 

[rdale]

It is nice to go back and grab a snapshot of the rotation algorithm / hail tracks for doing a survey and matching up your reports.

 

[Greg Stumpf]

The WDSSII CONUS server is undergoing an upgrade right now and they've run into a few issues. Hence, some data outages. Just some reminders from the web page:

Notice: It is normal for this experimental data feed to experience temporary outages.

Disclaimer: Use at your own risk. Data are experimental and may experience any number of problems including being late or not being available at all. Do not use for protection of life or property, or for any commercial use without permission.

For post-storm event verification, check out:

http://ondemand.nssl.noaa.gov

 

[Kiel Ortega]

There is a big change in the way we display the warnings in GE too. I just checked in the "upgrade"...SPC outlooks will be available now to overlay in Google Earth via the WDSS-II warnings kmz (note: I just checked in the code, so it might be a day or two before it gets on there). After the new computer system gets finished, I think I'll be working on getting together a Google Maps page that overlays the WDSS-II stuff. That's time permitting as we get into storm season and our spring experiments.

 

[Bill Tabor]

I just created a rotation tracks data set from March 18 0z to 1z near Bandera and Medina, Tx - the storm I chased. Anyway I saw the preview and it was good, but when I save the zip file and extract it all there are or two files 1 is the MESH.tif file and the other is rotation_tracks.tif. I click and they should load as pictures but I get 'drawing failed' when I attempt to load via Windows Picture Viewer. They are small and no .kmz file for Google Earth. Wonder what is wrong here? Perhaps The zip file is still building and even though I can download it isn't complete?

 

[Greg Stumpf]

I just created a rotation tracks data set from March 18 0z to 1z near Bandera and Medina, Tx - the storm I chased. Anyway I saw the preview and it was good, but when I save the zip file and extract it all there are or two files 1 is the MESH.tif file and the other is rotation_tracks.tif. I click and they should load as pictures but I get 'drawing failed' when I attempt to load via Windows Picture Viewer. They are small and no .kmz file for Google Earth. Wonder what is wrong here? Perhaps The zip file is still building and even though I can download it isn't complete?

I just worked fine for me. Are you sure you chose "KMZ" as the output type? Here is the zip file I just produced.

 

[Jody Radzik]

Not to backtrack too much, but where can I obtain this data in .kmz format?

 

[rdale]

Scroll up just a bit and click the links in Greg's post.

 

[Bill Tabor]

I just worked fine for me. Are you sure you chose "KMZ" as the output type? Here is the zip file I just produced.

That's cool Greg. I must have just selected the data wrong.

It looks great in Google Earth. Easy to find my location in relation to the storm. I went ahead and added it manually to my post by doing a print screen and loading it into Paint and saving.
http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?p=170815#post170815

Thanks for providing the link and info.

 

[Kiel Ortega]

Some updates have been done to the WDSS-II for Google Earth stuff. 1) Tiles: we are now sending our products out in tiles. This should make it easier on your computer when loading in the images. You need Google Earth 5 for this stuff to work (we did have this going, but it didn't work in Google Earth 4...their problem, not ours). 2) I have LSRs now flowing. These are ALL types of LSRs for the past 1/2 day, in categorized subdirectories in the KML file. It doesn't look like we've added them to the selections on http://wdssii.nssl.noaa.gov/ but they'll be there eventually. In the mean time, you can set up a network link yourself in Google Earth; the link is http://wdssii.nssl.noaa.gov/realtime/warnings/LSRs/NWS_LSRs.kml (set your update to 1 or 2 min because that's the fastest we update). I would also go to http://wdssii.nssl.noaa.gov/ to update any of your current kmz's that you grab for us to make sure you have any of the latest updates (we've let go of some products to save computer processing and the fact that they aren't all that useful).