As technology, data communication speeds and the science of meteorology advance at an ever-increasing rate, the demand for integration of new and evolving data sets by the operational forecaster increases. From new passive and active observing platforms to local numerical models, the operational forecasters have gained access to many of these data sets via the Internet. Unfortunately, integrating these evolving data sets into the baseline AWIPS software builds takes time. Fortunately, the flexibility of the AWIPS software allows for local integration of almost any new or expanded data set into the AWIPS environment.

Many groups within the National Weather Service (NWS) regional and field offices have taken advantage of broadband communications and the Local Data Acquisition and Dissemination (LDAD) component of AWIPS to ingest these new data sets. The NWS Forecast Office in Upton, NY and Eastern Region Headquarters have worked together to integrate into AWIPS a few these new data sets in support of both operational and collaborative research activities. These local activities have included mesoscale models, scatterometer derived wind fields and surface mesonet data taken from a diverse set of Internet available surface weather stations.

The purpose of this paper is to show the capabilities and value of local integration of these new and evolving data sets.