Rapid Refresh (RAP) and High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) Forum

Re: Sounding over Alaska

Posted By: Bill Moninger
Date: 28-February-14 2156Z

In Response To: Re: Sounding over Alaska (Jason)

Hi Jason, Unfortunately, we don't have the staff to upgrade the very old http://ruc.noaa.gov/soundings/ page. We're only able to support the interactive soundings pages at http://rucsoundings.noaa.gov/. The text data that is available on that page is the "GSD sounding format" that we have used for many years, which is described at http://rucsoundings.noaa.gov/raob_format.html. I think this means you may have to revisit your text parsers; but the GSD format was designed to be easily machine-read. Also, I want to correct and update something about Alaska soundings from my earlier response a few days ago: the RR1h soundings do *NOT* cover Alaska, only the CONUS. To get soundings from the entire RAP domain, you can use the new RAP_221 option at http://rucsoundings.noaa.gov/. However, the earlier warning applies: unpacking the data for the entire RAP domain (at 32km resolution) takes longer--and puts substantially more load on our server--than unpacking the CONUS Op40 data. This shouldn't be a problem for most human-generated requests. But automated requests for the RAP_221 data could load down our server. Be advised that when the load on our server gets too high, we automatically cut off all sounding requests until the load decreases, so no one is able to receive sounding data. We have to take this step to maintain the stability of our web server. We believe that we may soon be able to provide soundings from the entire RAP domain at 32km resolution in a way that is quicker and that puts much less load on our server. We'll post an announcement to the forum if and when that occurs. Thanks for your interest in our model data. I'm sorry we're not able to provide text data for the entire RAP domain in the format you've received in the past. -Bill

Messages In This Thread

Sounding over Alaska -- Jason -- 24-February-14 1936Z

Re: Sounding over Alaska -- Bill Moninger -- 24-February-14 2106Z

Re: Sounding over Alaska -- Jason -- 26-February-14 1712Z

Re: Sounding over Alaska -- Bill Moninger -- 28-February-14 2156Z

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