Google Earth Community: Live Tropical Data & NHC Forecast Models

EDIT: This Network Link has now been updated, and moved to this post here. Please read the warnings below anyway, before jumping to get the new file! Thanks

Well, I think I've done it... pretty much!

Attached is a KMZ file containing a Network Link to a remote KMZ file which holds all the coastal radar stations and all of the products they offer.

WARNING!!!!
There is a huge amount of data in this collection. DO NOT tick the top-level folders in either the Network Link itself, or the NWS RIDGE Radar Folder below it, or you will cause a huge pullback of data from the NOAA/NWS servers and possibly stall them.

When you first download and install the attached KMZ file, it SHOULD automatically fetch the sub-folders from my server. If this doesn't happen, try refreshing the Network Link (called Coastal Radar, at the very top level), by right-clicking on it, and then selecting Refresh from the drop-down menu.

When the folders have loaded, use the black arrows to open them and navigate downwards to the radar data-types you're interested in. Once again, DO NOT tick the high-level checkboxes!

When you finally get inside a 'data type' folder (such as Short-Range Reflectivity, or 1-hr Precipitation), you can safely select a few radar station names using their nodes. (Eg, put a tick next to Brownsville, TX, to overlay the chosen data-type, the warnings in force at that station, and the Legend).

You can, if you desire, go one level deeper inside each station, and turn off the warnings or the legend, if you prefer a clearer display.

Don't go nuts.... don't select too many radar-stations at once, and certainly, don't have multiple data-types showing for the same stations, if you're looking at more than two or three. Do the math... if you choose too many, it is possible to end up causing HUNDREDS of SEPARATE file-fetches from the same poor NOAA/NWS server, ok? Each station has 7 different types of data, plus 7 Legends, and 7 Warnings (which are actually the same files anyway). With all 21 stations & everything else on, you would be doing 441 file-fetches every 5 minutes!!!

Other information:
The Network Link is set to refresh every 4 hours, in order to get a replacement set of sub-folders from my server, and thus keep the geo-location data fairly fresh. This seemed more sensible than having EVERYBODY refresh the geo-location files via my poor server, every five minutes! It may, however, result in the occasional overlay not being pixel perfect in its position. Such is life. I'll be monitoring and tweaking this as we go forward, depending on what bandwidth gets eaten.

The radar stations themselves are set to refresh automatically from the NOAA/NWS site, every five minutes, so apart from chosing the stations you want to see, you should NOT need to manually refresh those (and you are advised against it, really). Every five minutes, your copy of Google Earth will pull back new images for each station selected, for each data-type selected, PLUS the warnings overlay and Legend files (because even the Legend files regularly change). That is QUITE enough potential for inundating NOAA/NWS as it is, so PLEASE don't keep refreshing the station-entries manually. NOAA/NWS only update their files once every 5 minutes anyway, so banging it won't actually get you anything new, ok?

Any comments or feedback welcome. Ultimately (if Paul is still up for it), we'll probably integrate this sub-set with the main Storm Tracking set that Paul's kindly provided. It may take us a while to get it right (and thus, this KMZ/Network Link is very much a beta-test). As such, it may disappear overnight, or be altered or cut-down dramatically in the next few days (depending on how stupid the bandwidth numbers turn out to be, or whether we get told to quit it, by NOAA!) Therefore, please bear with us, and use commonsense when playing with this tool. Thanks.

Edited by BigJacko (09/29/05 06:58 AM)

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