WRF Hydro Stream Flow Display in the IDV

WRF Hydro Netcdf output file contains streamflow, flow depth, longitude, latitude, altitude and stream order value for each forecast point. The total number of forecast point for the US CONUS is around 2.6 million and it is a big challenge for any visualization and analysis tool. The point cloud display shows point data as a set of colored points. It is very efficient than regular point type display for showing a large number of points. Our experiment of the point cloud display for WRF Hydro output was very successful. The only problem we had was the data I/O that could be a bottleneck when dealing with a large collection of input files. The point cloud display of WRF Hydro is in true 3D and can combine these displays with other geoscience data such as topography in the same display. In this presentation I would show some results of point cloud display of WRF Hydro output and discuss some approaches to improve the I/O performance.