UK and Ireland synops

[alanduckers]

Noticed we have lost the hourly UK and Ireland synops from both COD and NIU for the last few weeks.
Does anybody know if these is permanent or can suggest a alternative source for this data.
p.s.
Ogimet is now only updating some UK stations with 10 and 20 minute past the hour reports which contains a lot less data so its hard to input into DA.

[Phil Layton]

Hi Alan,
As last time, I cannot answer your question. I thought at first because the UK Ireland synops on the GTS were rebroadcast by KWBC (I think is Washington Operational Data Centre) it may have been an issue with the DHS budget shutdowns ..but as you say its been going for weeks.

I have taken the step of prioritising the METARs as the prime source and backing top with the odd Synop from Ogimet. I dont have the same detail as before but it is a lot more reliable. The METARs are transmitted by EGGY (Uxbridge was CAA now NATS) direct on to GTS, and the buoys are still transmitted by the UK Met Office EGRR onto the GTS so Im hopeful that they will keep going for a while.

As you say the Synops from Ogimet are sometimes truncated and I then have to use WeatherObs.com to fill in the missing data - but as I only have a handful its not too bad.

I still get a Synop only UK from list from Ogimet on hot/cold days to provide an accurate temperature map, but for others like the synoptic analysis I use as above.

Until there is a BUFR supplier and decoder, I think we are on losing wicket . I notice Meteomanz.com do offer an individual country list of BUFR - but it would still take a lot for copy pasting to create a chart (if you had a decoder!)

All the best,
Phil

[alanduckers]

Hi Alan,
As last time, I cannot answer your question. I thought at first because the UK Ireland synops on the GTS were rebroadcast by KWBC (I think is Washington Operational Data Centre) it may have been an issue with the DHS budget shutdowns ..but as you say its been going for weeks.

I have taken the step of prioritising the METARs as the prime source and backing top with the odd Synop from Ogimet. I dont have the same detail as before but it is a lot more reliable. The METARs are transmitted by EGGY (Uxbridge was CAA now NATS) direct on to GTS, and the buoys are still transmitted by the UK Met Office EGRR onto the GTS so Im hopeful that they will keep going for a while.

As you say the Synops from Ogimet are sometimes truncated and I then have to use WeatherObs.com to fill in the missing data - but as I only have a handful its not too bad.

I still get a Synop only UK from list from Ogimet on hot/cold days to provide an accurate temperature map, but for others like the synoptic analysis I use as above.

Until there is a BUFR supplier and decoder, I think we are on losing wicket . I notice Meteomanz.com do offer an individual country list of BUFR - but it would still take a lot for copy pasting to create a chart (if you had a decoder!)

All the best,
Phil

Thanks for that Phil and hopefully the synops will appear back on the system soon.
In the meantime i can manually input the synops via Ogimet into DA but cannot do it automatically.
As you say there is always Metar data to fall back on but i am hoping the "new" Digital atmosphere will input and decode/display synop BUFA data.
Perhaps Tim could answer this ?
Cheers,
Alan

[Dave Exton]

Hi all, sorry to hear about the UK SYNOP station reports (or lack of them) but it now seems that OGIMET have changed their format, so the usual editing which used to fill the gap in all the European countries, including the UK, no longer works. I've tried a few combos of editing the current reports, only to fail miserably. Is this the end of synoptic mapping as we know it, or can anyone come up with a work around?

Regards,
Dave.

[alanduckers]

Hi Dave,
if you copy the synops on the HTML version of the page and then paste into Excel it nicely separates out the synop report from all the other information.
You can then copy and paste the synops into Notepad directly.
All you have to do then is use the replace all tab to remove the " which excel adds to each synop.
The synops are then usable for Digital atmosphere,

Alan

[Dave Exton]

Thanks Alan, much appreciated! I'll try that one out later today,,,
Regards,
Dave

[Dave Exton]

Alan, just to add a p.s. to my last comment, thanks again, I tried your method and it all works... it's a bit long-winded compared to the method we used to use, especially if like me, you like to plot charts across Europe. I'm sure that the more I do it in the new way, the more slick I'll become at all the copying and pasting
Have a great weekend and best regards,
Dave.