The Weather Forecasting Forum

Anybody having trouble with plotting of upper air data. I can see the data in the "View Raw Data" but when I go to contour/or plot nothing happens. I even did this with the manual selection and it reports "0 observations. Any ideas?

version DAWS 1.0f

Thanks
John

Yes, I have had some difficulties with the upper air data. However, my problem seems to be too few contours plotting. I can open the same data in DA2000, and the plotting goes just fine, proving that the download was performed properly. I tried the reverse route one time, (downloading with DA2000, then opening the file in DAWS), and the plotting seemed alright, though I did not check back to be sure. Unfortunately, I can offer no help.
Cordially,
Carl Sidor

The analysis scripting can be very exacting. For example, you can use contour interval of 4 for surface pressure, but you have to use contour interval of .04 for altimeter setting, or you won't see any contours.

I'm not sure I'm really crazy about having to use analysis scripting as the only way to be able to impact line widths, and other contour parameters. It was a lot simpler to have preferences control the menu operations of contours (and still okay to have full independent control while using analysis scripting).

It seems an earlier version (1.0c? - could be wrong here), had these parameters in prefs, and I set my surface levels contours to 2 pixels and altimeter contours to 1 pixel for menu contouring. Now they are set that way, and I can't change them w/o going to anaylsis scripts, and that is only temporary. Or am I missing something somebody?

I've been wondering about ploting contours for upper air air-pressure data. I've tried several intravals and couldn't get it to wor. however, I tried today ploting a H850 contour map and it worked fine.

today, after reading the original post of this subject, I tried "cont cint=.04 altr h850" and got a rather tight (unreadable) contour map of the 850 level. Intravals of 1 and 4 produced less cluttered contour maps. I've tried this in the past with intravals of various amounts and I'm trying to figure why I actually got results this time. This is the first time I've actually got the contours to plot upper air air-pressure.

Still being rather a novice in regards to weather stuff, I'm wondering whether this is even and accopmlishment or not. Still more, now that I got it to plot contours, now what? I'm reading books on weather maps and have a lot to learn.

I've tried this again and now I don't get any results no matter what intreval I'm using. whats up with that?

jrader wrote: I tried "cont cint=.04 altr h850" and got a rather tight (unreadable) contour map of the 850 level.

Change that contour interval from .04 to a whole number. A general standard interval for 925, 850 and 700 mb height field analysis is usually 30 decameters (DM). So, you could use 30 for the contour interval.

Baroclinicity wrote:Change that contour interval from .04 to a whole number. A general standard interval for 925, 850 and 700 mb height field analysis is usually 30 decameters (DM). So, you could use 30 for the contour interval.

I only tried that (cint=.04) once based on Wally's recomendation in this thread and found it produced a cluttered contour map that was nothing but overlapping contour lines. Had I used a number like 30, I would have gotten 1 or 2 contour lines. At 850 mb, while I could get things to work, intrevals of 1 and 4 produced nice readable weather charts.

The point, however, is not the intereval but why do I get inconsistant results. Yesterday was the first time I actually got DAW to plot upper air isobars and it only lasted a short time. I don't recall ever getten DA2000 to plot upper air isobars. Now doing the exact same thing produces nothing, except a log entry on the sidebar stating that it did some isoplething. There are only 2 possibilities I can see at this point. One being that the data I've downloaded has been mostly crap, except for once yesterday and the other being that this is a bug in the software. I would normally add myself to the list but since I am copying and pasting the same thing over and over and editing the contour intreval, I can safely assume it's not me.

My suggestion regarding .04 interval related only to surface pressure. You got to find (or know) the appropriate value for the chart worked.

However, I do understand and will try to duplicate the inconsistencies.

Do you quit and rerun program to "clear out" "hangs" ? That cures some problems.

I just tried this again after ploting reletive humidity contours and now I can again plot upper air isobars. The data never changed as I was working with the same data.

Any ideas?

Wally Mayo wrote:My suggestion regarding .04 interval related only to surface pressure. You got to find (or know) the appropriate value for the chart worked.

However, I do understand and will try to duplicate the inconsistencies.

Do you quit and rerun program to "clear out" "hangs" ? That cures some problems.

I have tried a number of things such as restarting DAW, rebooting and re-retreiving the data off the internet. There has not a consistant method to make it work.