20030603: General Support - NA - National Digital Forecast Database

>From: "Michael Voss" <address@hidden>
>Organization: UCAR/Unidata
>Keywords: 200306031945.h53JjE57017509

>Institution: San Jose State University / Department of Meteorology
>Package Version: general question
>Operating System: NA
>Hardware Information: NA
>Inquiry: Hello,
>
>Very general question here:
>Does UNIDATA have plans to incorporate digital forecasts provided by the Natio
> nal Digital Forecast Database into IDD/LDM/GEMPAK?  And/or..will NMAP2 for ex
> ample be able to plot this data once it\'s decoded?
>
>Thank You,
>
>-Mike Voss
>
>
>

Mike,

Currently the NDFD grids are available on the NWS ftp servers, not NOAAPORT
(and thus not yet on the IDD). I don't know of the distribution schedule 
for adding to NOAAPORT.

Already available in GEMPAK 5.6.J (released back in March) was the added
NDFD grib2 decoder (ndfdg2), and this is reworked for improvements in
the upcoming GEMPAK 5.6.K release. Also, the GEMPAK grid routines
are improved to handle subsetting and sampling of the higher resolution
grids (such as the 5km NDFD) for improved display capabilities.

Steve Chiswell