davidwasserman
With GRLevelX, what's the difference between GRLevel2, GRLeve3 & GRLevelAnalyst?
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- Science and Storm Chasing
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GRLevel3 displays the Level3 radar data
GRLevel2 displays the Level2 radar data
GRLevel2 Analyst Edition displays level2 radar data along with volumetric display and custom high resolution radar products.
-John
Dan Cook
EF5
Anyone here use Storm Lab? I used to love using it but after discovering GrLevel3 I haven't used it since.
Tom Stefanac
EF2
I had a demo version of storm lab a while back and thought it was great but the initial cost vs functionality kept me away, especially given the pro version was much more costly just to have the benefit of metars overlaid. Grlevelx and other software such as Unidata’s IDV made me never look back.
About a year ago just for the heck of it I visited the Storm Lab forums and did a search for GrlevelX vs Storm Lab. Needless to say all threads regarding such a comparison were banned and a number of claims that GrlevelX stole concepts from Storm Lab came to light. When I used Google's cached page search I discovered a number of threads which had been deleted where owners of Storm Lab basically said GrlevelX is superior within the Storm Lab forum itself. I think that pretty much explains everything!!!
So until something comes into existence which is much cheaper than Baron but has the same coverage, more data products and the high resolution radar capabilities and functionality of GrlevelX, Mike's software will continue to dominate.Jason Boggs
I used to use weathertap but then I discovered GrLevelX and weathertap went out the window.Paul Townsend
I have to laugh at the irony. I am perusing my trial version of GRLevel3 and all of the radar data is from a few minutes past 4 AM CST today. Not a very good selling point. Can any users verify this, and let me know why this is? I assume if GR is doing some maintanence or having data feed problems that you have gotten some message indicating as such. Other radar sources are not having this problem.
Jeff Snyder
EF5
GR3 gets the data straight from the NWS servers. Any work that Mike is doing (developer of GR) wouldn't affect incoming data unless the format of that data changes.
Dan Cook
EF5
Same here. I used StormLab back in 2003 and it was great. But now nothing compares to Grlevel3. Plus I like that he actually updates his software.
Bill Tabor
EF5
I agree Grlevelx is nice, and most of the time will be spent at the local radar level, but one reason I like Weathertap is it's quick overview of all the radar weather via regional displays. I often view and animate this as it gives an idea of what larger level dynamic interactions are going on in the system. Then it is quite easy to click and "drill down". Unless the latest versions of Grlevelx have changed there is still no macro - overview level. I user is forced to click and load station after station to see what is going on. Another nice feature Weathertap has even when in the local doppler radars is the ability to click a compass style directional gauge that will quickly take you to adjacent radars of that station. I tend to do a lot of switching between radars to see what the adjacent stations are picking up in the scans for a particular interrelated storm. If Grlevelx incorporated a system of navigation between local stations and even national, regional, sectional radar views I think it would be a greatly improved and easier to use tool. Sure I realize it has Favorites, and they are nice and it helps, but IMO still not as good as the navigation abilities of Weathertap.
This also brings up another thing about Grlevelx I'm not that crazy about, and that is animation. Basically you have to have it loaded long enough to build a loop. That may be an hour or more to get some good motion going. With Weathertap you download and play the loop back. So I think they need to improve that also. At least they should provide that as an option.
As far as the quality of the tool and resolution of the radar, and all the fun with placefiles, etc there is no doubt that Grlevelx is superior.
Jeff Snyder
EF5
That is an option in GRx.... Press the "Start Archiver" button between the Start Polling and Stop Polling buttons (top-left). This will make GRx fetch previous radar data, so you can loop almost immediately... Make sure you have the latest build of GR3 (though the Archiver feature has been on GR3 for a long time, since one of the first few builds):
Also... I agree that it would be nice if GRx had a nat'l map from which you could pick a station (rather than having to select one from a list), and I agree that a "regional" image would be nice. However, you can quickly move to an adjacent radar site by merely clicking on the radar ID on the map... In other words, you don't need to click the radar on the list -- you can just click on the location of the adjacent radar you want (assuming you have selected Show Radar Sites from the GIS menu). No need to scroll through the list as long as the radar you want is near the radar you are viewing.Last edited by a moderator:Paul Townsend
I would still like to hear what other GRLevel3 users have for a time stamp of their latest radar data. My latest data is stuck at a few minutes past 4 this morning. I won't be hitting any purchase button if I can't resolve this issue. I am on a trial version if that helps. The radar program was not active at this time of the morning.
David Drummond
Member
My current timestamp is 4:16:14 PM and it's now 4:20 my time and it's about to download an update. I am getting data from Allisonhouse.
Zac Flamig
EF1
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2006
- Messages
- 95
GRLevel3 pulls its data from public http/ftp servers provided by the NWS. In Specific: ftp://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/SL.us008001/DF.of/DC.radar/ and it breaks down into product and site and then actual data directories from there.
Something on the NWS end broke this morning and as such programs like GRLevel3 and pretty much every other program that pulls data in this manner won't have current data. This has absolutely nothing to do with GRLevel3 or any problems with it.
If you want to avoid this the only real solution would be to use another service like AllisonHouse to get data from. But I do believe this is a pretty rare occurance for the NWS as I can't recall having seen anything like this in the past couple of years that I have been watching.
Dick McGowan
EF5
My timestamp is at 4:14 A.M. Jeff- thanks for all of the GR placefiles, BTW
I also use your SPC product page on my cell phone on the road, since I don't have mobile internet, to get the latest updates.Paul Townsend
Can anyone point me to some shapefiles? Thank you Jeff for your work. Does anyone else have any unique files i could use? Thanks for your responses.
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