The Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin - Madison has been producing DIFAX-like maps for some time, and is now prepared to offer this product to the Unidata community.
The maps are created using data ingested from the Unidata IDD feed, and processed primarily using GEMPAK. The maps may be requested from your upstream feed using the DIFAX product type. An typical request line in your ldmd.conf (don't forget the TABs) would look like:
request DIFAX ".*" your.upstream.host
The maps are broadcast as gzip'd postscript files. The ldm can save the products to disk, and/or pipe them directly to a printer using the printmap.csh shell script. Some user configuration of this script is necessary, but it should run on all supported Unidata *nix platforms with minimal modification.
Some of the maps we create to be printed on 8.5x11 paper, and others are created to be printed on 11x17. For the 8.5x11 maps, I plan to only send out one copy (the 8.5x11 one) but for the 11x17 maps, I found a simple way to scale the postscript down to print correctly on 8.5x11 printers, so for those I'm going to send out both an 11x17 map and an 8.5x11 one.
The file name template is unique for each of the 3 different types (8.5x11 only, 8.5x11 from 11x17, and 11x17) so it should be simple for a site to pull in all the maps at only 8.5x11 or to grab the 8.5x11 ones for which only those exist, and 11x17 for those.
The names of the files conform to the following, where 'mapname' is replaced by something indicating exactly what map it is:
For example, the 12 hour forecast for the MRF 4 panels is named:
one_mrf4panel_00Z_012h.ps.gz (for the only 8.5x11 maps)
This way, a site can grab all the file starting with '85x11' and those starting with 'one' and get the whole suite of maps for an 8.5x11 printer, or grab all files starting with '11x17' and all starting with 'one' to get the entire suite including 11x17 maps where available and 8.5x11 for the rest.
Here are sample pqact.conf entries (don't forget the TABs) to save and/or print the products. To receive the entire set of maps, one should use the top set of entries (only 8.5x11) and one or the other of the bottom (either 11x17 or 8.5x11 reduced)
######################################################################## # UW-Madison Genuine imitation DIFAX-like maps ######################################################################## # Maps for which only 8.5x11 is sent out # # Pipe to printer DIFAX ^one.*.ps.gz PIPE -close /usr/local/ldm/util/printmap.csh # # Save to disk DIFAX ^(one.*.ps.gz) FILE -overwrite /data/difax/\1 # ######################################################################## ######################################################################## # 11x17 maps # # Pipe to printer DIFAX ^11x17.*.ps.gz PIPE -close /usr/local/ldm/util/printmap.csh # # Save to disk DIFAX ^(11x17.*.ps.gz) FILE -overwrite /data/difax/\1 # ######################################################################## ######################################################################## # Reduced versions of 11x17 maps (8.5x11 duplicates of 11x17 above) # # Pipe to printer DIFAX ^85x11.*.ps.gz PIPE -close /usr/local/ldm/util/printmap.csh # # Save to disk DIFAX ^(85x11.*.ps.gz) FILE -overwrite /data/difax/\1 # ########################################################################
US Surface (00,03.06,09,12,15,18,21) LARGE Upper air 850 hPa (00,12) Upper air 700 hPa (00,12) Upper air 500 hPa (00,12) Upper air 300 hPa (00,12) Upper air 250 hPa (00,12) Upper air 200 hPa (00,12) Northern Hemisphere Sea Level Pressure/1000-500 hPa Thickness analysis (00,12) Northern Hemisphere 500 hPa heights (00,12) Southern Hemisphere Sea Level Pressure/1000-500 hPa Thickness analysis (00,12) Southern Hemisphere 500 hPa heights (00,12) 200 hPa Atlantic Streamline analysis (00,12) 1000 hPa Western Hemisphere (Pacific/Atlantic) Streamline analysis (00,12) 1000 hPa Eastern Hemisphere (Indian Ocean) Streamline analysis (00,12) Atlantic Surface analysis (00,12) LARGE Pacific Surface analysis (00,12) LARGE Composite Moisture (00,12) Max temps (once daily) Min temps (once daily) 24 hour accumulated precipitation
Eta 4 panel (00,12,24,36,48) 2x daily LARGE Eta 850 4 panel 2xdaily NGM 4 panel (00,12,24,36,48) 2x daily LARGE NGM 850 4 panel 2x daily NGM Temps MOS 4 panel 2x daily NGM Precip MOS 4 panel 2x daily AVN 4 panel (00,12,24,36,48,60,72) 2x daily LARGE AVN 850 4 panel 2xdaily AVN Temps MOS 4 panel 2x daily MRF 4panel (12,24,36,48,60,72,84,96,108,120,132,144,168,192,216,240) once daily MRF Temps MOS 9 panel (1x daily) LARGE ECMWF 2 panel (00,24,48,72,96,120,144,168)Please address questions or comments about these maps to Pete Pokrandt (poker@meteor.wisc.edu)