The Severe Weather Inventory (NSWI): spatial query tools, web services and data portals at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center

NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) archives Weather Surveillance Radar, 1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) data from the national network of ~160 NWS, DOD and FAA sites. These are commonly referred to as Next-Generation Doppler Radars (NEXRAD). The NCDC NEXRAD Archive contains over 1000 terabytes of volume scan data, known as Level-II, and derived products, known as Level-III. Several of the products in the NEXRAD Level-III data stream are point features describing general storm structure, hail, mesocyclone and tornado signatures. The NCDC developed software package, Java NEXRAD Tools, is used to decode these features into an Oracle Spatial geodatabase. The NEXRAD Severe Weather Inventory (NSWI) provides user access to the geodatabase via the NCDC web page, Web Feature Services (WFS) or OPeNDAP. The results of interactive web page queries may be saved in a variety of formats, including plain text, XML, NetCDF and Shapefile.