The Weather and Hazards Data Viewer provides access to the NWS National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD), which consists of gridded (5 kilometer by 5 kilometer) forecasts of sensible weather elements. The viewer currently provides access to maximum and minimum temperature, surface wind speed, direction, and gust, relative humidity, precipitation amount, and significant wave height. The user can view a static image of the weather forecast at a given time or can loop or animate a forecast element to get a sense of the forecast changes over a period of time. Future enhancement of the weather and hazards viewer will include the addition of snow amount, heat index, wind chill, weather (wx), and probability of precipitation (PoP).
Additional hazards such as current and historic fire perimeters, recent earthquakes, and tsunami inundation layers are also available for viewing. Accompanying weather forecast elements and select hazards is the ability to view current radar and satellite images. Looping of radar images is available in the tool to enhance the usability.
To make use of this tool, users access a simple on-line mapping application that allows visualization of the weather forecasts and associated hazards through an Internet web browser. The tool also includes a hyperlink providing access to GIS shapefiles of the same NDFD weather forecast elements available in the viewer. The weather forecast shapefile service, at this time, is only available for the western half of the United States and is available at a 2.5 kilometer by 2.5 kilometer resolution.
This paper will discuss in further detail the enhancement and expansion of the Weather Forecasts and Hazards Data Viewer, and implementation of an open source GIS software solution in place of ESRI's ArcIMS.
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