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 photographs.  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. 

­Weather/plot plots a weather map.  ‘Radar’ displays the precipitation intensities reported in selected time period.  The echoes range from 1 (light) to 6 (severe).  Snow produces 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 terminals 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 earthquake 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 relative 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. 

-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 unavailable 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 monotonically darken with increasing precipitation on monochrome displays. 

Plan 9  —  January 03, 1993