To begin addressing the long-term need of archiving WSR-88D base (Level II) data, and in light of the compelling need for real time access to base data for use in a variety of applications, especially numerical weather prediction and hazardous weather decision support systems, the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms (CAPS) at the University of Oklahoma joined forces in 1998 with the UCAR Unidata Program, the University of Washington, the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), and the WSR-88D Operational Support Facility (now the Radar Operations Center, or ROC) to establish the Collaborative Radar Acquisition Field Test (CRAFT). CRAFT is an experimental test bed designed to evaluate the real time compression and Internet-based transmission of WSR-88D base (Level II) data from multiple radars.

An initial test bed of six radars, located in and around Oklahoma, began delivering real time base data in early 1999 with virtually no interruptions, and now has been expanded to 16 radars to serve as the prototype for a national system. About a year ago, the National Climatic Data Center began ingesting compressed base data, via CRAFT, and now is acquiring data from 15 of the 16 CRAFT radars, via the Abilene backbone, and archiving them directly onto the hierarchical data storage system. More recently, other groups, including the NWS Telecommunications Gateway, have experimented with the CRAFT ingest system.

We describe in this paper recent progress and future plans of Project CRAFT, with emphasis on proposed data delivery architectures and testing strategies for research and education, operations, and commercial application. We further discuss the transition to Open-RPG, metrics of system reliability and security, results from preliminary data mining studies, and opportunities for the future.