Penn State and weather analysis: The Unidata age

Penn State has been using computer-automated weather analysis techniques for nearly 25 years. Starting with the DEC PDP-11 platform in the mid 1970's, real-time data collection and analysis software were developed at Penn State and used well into the 1990's. During the 1990's the Unidata effort, having become well established as the defacto standard for weather data collection and analysis at universities and elsewhere, was adopted by Penn State as its core weather data system. Today the Department serves as a data relay site for several other institutions while supporting local servers for 14 Sun workstations and numerous remote user connections.

This paper will discuss where we've been as well as our present and future directions for Unidata data and software at the Penn State Department of Meteorology including plans for the installation of RAID/SAN-capable disk arrays, Linux workstations and servers, and the development of a student-operated data archive center for use by Penn State as well as other institutions on a limited basis.