Effective July 8, 2008 at 1400 UTC – QPF,
Snow Amount, and Sky Cover Elements in the National
Digital Forecast Database to be upgraded to Operational Status
for the CONUS, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, Hawaii,
and Guam
Experimental Hazard element to
be added
to NDFD on same date and time: TIN08-49
Implementation
details for Hazards element
On July 8, 2008 at 1400 Coordinated Universal
Time (UTC), or midnight July 9 local time in Guam , the Quantitative
Precipitation Forecast (QPF), Snow Amount, and Sky Cover elements
in the National Digital
Forecast Database (NDFD) will be upgraded to operational status for all the domains for which they are currently available,
as shown below:
Element
|
CONUS
|
16 NDFD CONUS subsectors
|
Puerto Rico/Virgin Islands |
Hawaii
|
Guam
|
Alaska
|
QPF
|
To become operational
|
To become operational
|
To become operational
|
To become operational
|
Not available
|
Not available
|
Snow Amount
|
To become operational
|
To become operational
|
Not required
|
To become operational
|
Not required
|
Not available
|
Sky Cover
|
To become operational
|
To become operational
|
To become operational
|
To become operational
|
To become operational
|
Not available
|
With this upgrade to operational status, all
of these elements will be archived by NOAA's National
Climatic Data Center (NCDC). See
the NDFD
Access Data web page for information on accessing operational
NDFD elements from NCDC's archive.
The Product Description Document (PDD) which
describes these elements in experimental status will be removed
from the Catalog of Experimental NWS Products
and Services by the implementation date. These
operational elements will be described in a future NWS policy instruction.
As with all NDFD elements, QPF,
Snow Amount, and Sky Cover are accessible in several
ways:
Customers who want to pull these elements for
one or more domain(s) via http, anonymous ftp, user-defined geographic
areas or points, or the FOS’ Server Access Service,
may need to create (or update their) procedures and scripts to
begin receiving the climate outlooks from NDFD. Detailed
information for http and ftp users is included below.
Customers who use the NDFD
XML via web service, NDFD
GML via WFS and/or NDFD
images via web browser can use the same method they
currently use to continue to acquire these elements for the
domain(s) of interest. For
XML and GML users, this change will be transparent; there is
no distinction in the data itself between experimental and operational elements. For
graphics users, the only change will be the “experimental” label
currently on the NDFD QPF, Snow Amount, and Sky Cover images
will be removed from the image on the effective date and time.
Customers who key on the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO) super heading(s) to access NDFD elements,
can access a list in pdf of WMO
super headings for the QPF, Snow Amount,
and Sky Cover elements in NDFD
Users are encouraged to continue to provide
comments and feedback on both operational and experimental NDFD
elements via one of the brief online survey and comment forms (below)
or by sending an e-mail to: nws.ndfd@noaa.gov.
Customer Surveys:
GRIB2 file users NDFD XML users NDFD WFS users NDFD graphics users
Other useful NDFD web pages:
Instructions for
ftp and http users:
On July 8, 2008 at 1400 UTC, GRIB2 files for
the QPF, Snow Amount, and Sky Cover elements
in NDFD will:
- Start being posted to the operational
NDFD http and ftp subdirectories for the affected domains
- Cease being posted in the current
experimental NDFD http and ftp subdirectories for the same
domains
Because the physical location (i.e., URL) of
the element files changes when the status changes from experimental
to operational, partners and customers who access one or more
of these elements via http or anonymous ftp may need to update
their procedures and/or scripts to continue to access these elements
once they become operational.
A specific list of the current (experimental)
and future (operational) subdirectory URLs to access
these elements via either http or ftp is shown in Table 1
below. There will be no overlap of data between the operational
subdirectories and the experimental subdirectories. Once an element
becomes operational and moves to the operational element subdirectory
on July 8, 2008 at 1400 UTC, no new files for that element will
be posted in the experimental subdirectory. A few hours after
the affected files have successfully posted to the operational
subdirectory, the obsolete files will be deleted from the associated
experimental subdirectories.
The file names for the GRIB2 files for the QPF,
Snow Amount, and Sky Cover elements within each subdirectory remain
unchanged, as shown in Table
2, below.
Table
1. Current (experimental) and future (operational)
subdirectory URLs to access QPF, Snow Amount, and Sky Cover
elements from NDFD via http or anonymous ftp by domain
NDFD
Domain |
http URLs |
ftp URLs |
CONUS
|
http |
ftp |
Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands |
http |
ftp |
Hawaii
|
http |
ftp |
Guam |
http |
ftp |
16 pre-defined NDFD CONUS subsectors:
|
Pacific Northwest |
|
ftp |
Pacific Southwest |
|
ftp |
Northern Rockies |
|
ftp |
Central Rockies |
|
ftp |
Southern Rockies |
|
ftp |
Northern Plains |
|
ftp |
Central Plains |
|
ftp |
Southern Plains |
|
ftp |
Upper Mississippi Valley |
|
ftp |
Central Mississippi Valley |
|
ftp |
Southern Mississippi Valley |
|
ftp |
Central Great Lakes |
|
ftp |
Eastern Great Lakes |
|
ftp |
Northeast |
|
ftp |
Southeast |
|
ftp |
Mid-Atlantic |
|
ftp |
|
|
|
|
Table
2 –NDFD
Elements in this implementation and their associated file names in
the http and ftp subdirectories and domains
|
www.nws.noaa.gov 
