WEATHER(7) WEATHER(7)
NAME
map, key, plot, photo, movie, report, query, wextract,
iupdate - weather maps, reports, photos, and utilities
SYNOPSIS
weather/photo [ vis | ir ]
weather/movie [ vis | ir ] [ nobs ]
weather/map [ us | us24 | nyc | colo | dc | eur | jap |
radar ]
weather/key
weather/query
weather/plot [ wextract-options ] [ map-location ] [ -r dn ]
[ radar ]
weather/report [ wextract-options ] [ quake summary ]
/bin/aux/wextract [ wextract-options ]
/bin/aux/iupdate [ -i yyyymm ]
DESCRIPTION
Weather/map displays the latest available national weather
map, including precipitation, isobars, fronts, and wind
information. The map is updated three times a day.
Weather/key displays a reference chart for the symbols in
weather/map.
Weather/photo fetches and displays the latest satellite pho-
tographs. Visible and infrared photographs are selected with
vis and ir respectively. Ir is the default. In infrared
photos, hotter objects are blacker. The maps and photos are
obtained from vmd.cso.uiuc.edu which updates them hourly
(except visible maps during the hours of darkness) across
the entire US. The National Weather Service data is made
available courtesy of the National Science Foundation-funded
UNIDATA Project and the University of Michigan.
Weather/movie displays the last nobs (default 72) weather
photos in a loop at five frames per second. Infrared photos
are default.
Weather/query connects to the Weather Underground server at
the University of Michigan. This is an interactive menu
system providing access to a variety of weather information,
including forecasts.
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WEATHER(7) WEATHER(7)
Weather/plot plots a weather map. `Radar' displays the pre-
cipitation intensities reported in selected time period.
The echoes range from 1 (light) to 6 (severe). Snow pro-
duces weaker reflections than rain. The -r option selects
the radar display symbols: d for various size dots, n for
numbers. The default is various shaded circles. For termi-
nals with 1-bit deep bitmaps, the d option is default.
Radar information is not available outside the US. The time
period for the reported information is controlled by
wextract-options (See below.) The default is the previous
60 minutes.
Map-location selects the area to be displayed:
e ne se gulf us
Parts of the US. Default is e.
-L lat1 lat2 long1 long2
Specific latitude and longitude pairs.
Weather/report extracts various reports. Available reports
are:
summary A chatty summary of the national weather. Default
shows all weather summaries for the last 24 hours.
quake Earthquake reports. Default displays all earth-
quake reports for the last 72 hours.
Iupdate scans /lib/weather/raw and updates
/lib/weather/raw.idx. This file provides the year and month
information (which the raw data lacks) and greatly speeds
the processing of the huge raw file. If the raw file is
restarted, the -iyyyymm option recreates the index file.
Yyyymm is the year and month of the first record in the raw
file.
Wextract prints selected parts of the raw file based on time
and record type. Wextract-options are:
-a age Maximum age of records before selected
time. Default is 1 day.
-d enddate Date and time of the last record accepted.
Default is the present. Dates may be rel-
ative to the current time, or an absolute
time. Relative dates begin with a minus
and have the form [-days.]hours[:minutes
Absolute times have the form
[[[year/]month/]day.]hour[:minute][TZ]
where year is a four digit number and TZ
is Z for GMT or a three-letter time zone
identifier.
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WEATHER(7) WEATHER(7)
-t record-type,...
Types of records selected. Each record in
the raw weather file has a three digit
type. A record type may be a string of
these numbers, or a record name. The
records in the FAA-supplied raw file are
not documented. A listing of the record
names appears in the source listing for
wextract. Some record types are:
sd Encoded precipitation radar data.
wa AIRMETS for pilots.
ws Convective SIGMETS for pilots.
unknown All records not in one of the named types, plus
malformed records.
all All records.
FILES
/lib/weather/raw The raw weather data straight off the
wire since early June, 1990.
/lib/weather/raw.idx An hourly index into /lib/weather/raw.
SEE ALSO
map(7), plot(1).
BUGS
Network vagaries and problems on the source machines may
make weather/photo, weather/query, and weather/map unavail-
able or outdated.
The satellite photographs the east coast at an oblique
angle.
Iupdate and wextract can be slow when the data is WORM-
resident, which is likely. Absolute times don't handle time
zones correctly. Much of the raw file is a mystery.
The rain echo intensities on weather/map do not monotoni-
cally darken with increasing precipitation on monochrome
displays.
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