On Mon, 10 Feb 1997, Mathew L. Powers wrote:
I was noticing something while surfing the ole SCH page the other day.
SCH=Storm Chaser Homepage. Ah yes...I have heard of it... :-)
First, why is it that Difax products can be displayed real time on this page.
I realize it is a NOAA link. Is it simply b/c it's NOAA's stuff so they can
display grid products however they please? This makes sense, but I'm curious
to find out if that is exactly it.
It's their data. They can do what they want with it. Sell it, give it away for
free, whatever. They have just decided recently to give it away, at their
option. They were under no obligation to do anything else. Are the data vendors
happy about this? I'm amazed they aren't screaming at them right now... but
that's life. The NWS DID, however, sign an agreement to let the vendors
distribute NIDS data and by contract the NWS can't send it out on their own.
Until the contract expires...that's coming up soon. At that point, who knows
what will happen.
Also, I noticed they have more ETA stuff, as in 850 charts and Boundary Layer
winds. Is this new? Can we at the College of DuPage receive this stuff? Have
we missed the boat on these products?
OK, correct me if I am wrong on this, but like the DD+ circuit, not everything
the NWS sends out gets transmitted to external sources. In the case of DD+, it
is a by-product of two things: bandwidth and what they deem as what can be sent
out to external users that is fit to broadcast. They had the Davenport Area
Forecast Discussion (AFD) in AFOS long before we ever saw it, for example. In
the case of DiFAX, they also have more bandwidth, I believe, in the NWS
circuits.
Gilbert
