View NOAA/NWS NEXRAD in ArcGIS 9.X
We had a little rain last night so I figured I’d spend my morning looking for ways to bring Doppler radar imagery into ArcMap. There are of course a ton of ways (and at 9.2 you’ll have even more), but one simple ArcScript caught my eye. NOAA/NWS WEATHER FOR ArcGIS 9.X gives ArcMap users access some some nice NOAA/NWS radar imagery. Simplicity I think is what caught my eye (Of course I’d rather just add a WMS service, but that will have to wait) and sometimes that is the best way to be productive.
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This looks great. I almost installed it until I saw this in the README:
“IMPORTANT!!! THIS PROGRAM CREATES A FOLDER (www.srh.noaa.gov) TO STORE THE IMAGERY UNDER C:\GIS\NWSRADAR\ AND SHOULD BE DELETED AFTER USE OR YOUR HARD DRIVE WILL BE OVER LOADED! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!”
I’ve been using accuweather that I found on Mapdex for my weather, and is working out pretty good.
Indeed. I was pretty excited about it when I downloaded it Monday, then I saw the readme too. Are there any WMS weather services?
We plan to add WMS capability in the near future, but if you have ArcMAP you can connect to nowcoast.noaa.gov
NWS Weather Radar WMS:
http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/nexrad/n0r-t.cgi?&SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetCapabilities
Example using WMS-T (WMS with time ability):
http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/nexrad/n0r-t.cgi?&SERVICE=WMS&VERSION=1.1.1&REQUEST=GetMap&layers=nexrad_base_reflect,nexrad-n0r-wmst&time=2004-08-23T20:35
Shown here in OpenLayers:
http://openlayers.org/dev/examples/wmst.html
With ArcGIS Explorer Coming out in the next week or so, radar and warning data will be viewable in ArcGIS and in ArcGIS Explorer.
http://radar.weather.gov/GIS.html has KML/KMZ warnings and radar outputs. They access the data on the NWS Website, and are updated every minute for warnings, and every two minutes for radar images.