Several Questions

Hello Tom,

First off, this is an amazing program. I was bored tonight and wanted something “new” to play with and came across this. I downloaded the program, installed it, checked it out and freaked out. LOL

Jason WXSIM is a great program and has an ever steeper learning curve that WD :lol: You have to use WXSIMATE to import WD data into WXSIM and WXSIM needs to import a load of data into itself. Customising the program is pretty much what you pay for when you register Tom spends quite a lot of time setting it up for your location and since it looks like you are in the USA then you have a huge amount of free data to work with. I have found it pretty good at forecasting for the next 24 to 48 hours when compared to our own Met Office here in the UK. It is very difficult with my very limited experience to say what you need to import. This is where Tom’s customisation gets you started, from then on you can play with it to tweak your forecasts for your local area…

Stuart

Hey,

Thanks for the reply, If I’m understanding you correctly, Id have to register the program in order to make it work with WD? Maybe thats one reason why I can’t import the WD files from my location. As I’m writing this, its starting to make sense now…No wonder Atlanta is the default and not my state - Indiana. LOL

I just checked the site and to register its $75 US. I’ll play with it some more and see if this is really worthwhile, I mean $75 isn’t bad but I’m a 25 year old guy who lives alone so money is tight. heh heh But, from the looks of it, its worth it.

Thanks again for your response. :slight_smile:

Jason,

While I have not yet plunked out the cash for a licensed copy it is on the upcoming years wish list and I have played with it a bit…

When you launch WXSIMATE you will need to set the type of software from “Customize - Local Station Source” to Weather Display then type the location for your WD logfiles files in “Import from local station” then hit Import Data…

Then close WXSIMATE and open WXSIM and click “Import - Import Local Data”…

That is about as far as I have ever gotten, since my copy isn’t registered and doesn’t pull data for my location, but this coming year I swear I am going to get this going LOL

-Bob

$75 isn’t much for WxSim. It’s not just a registration fee. When you register Tom spends some time (probably quite a few hours) customising the program for you local area. This makes the model a better fit to your local conditions. I must get back to my experiments with it…I left it alone whilst I worked on MML, so I should get back into it now.

Chris,

I understand that the price is for the customization, just used “registration” as it is commonly used for programs… :slight_smile:

I really meant to get this going this past year BUT… anyway “The Boss” said this should be doable in the next couple of months and we shall see…

-Bob

Hi Jason,

Thanks for your interest in my program! :slight_smile: I do understand what you mean about “freaking out” when you first saw it - there’s a lot of stuff there! In the long run, thant’s a good thing, as once you get the hang of it you should find it very versatile and flexible - and hopefully accurate!

You can actually use WXSIMATE (which can access your WD log files) and use that with WXSIM, even without, or before, registering. You need to correctly identify the directory where your WD files are stored in one of WXSIMATE’s text boxes, then Import that data (right side of the form), and then in WXSIM, use Import/Import Local Data.

This should be convenient, and neat, but is not a very big step towards a good forecast, as you could have entered most of that data manually, anyway. A bigger step is learning to import external data, such as METAR and model data (FOUS and READY formats). You can actually get the READY model data in there even without registering, but the METAR (and many other features) won’t work without the custom files I’d create for you.

While you think about customizing, in addition to trying it out in a rather limited way for your own site (you’d need to type in your lat, lon, etc. under Location/Other), try the sample data with Atlanta as the site, so you can see what it’s like with custom data. There are examples to work through in the manual, and be sure to click on any blue caption or word in the program for instant help on that topic.

BTW, I know what you mean about being “the weather man”. I’m a high school teacher (physics, astronomy, and - of course - meteorology!) and in the winter, I’m always being asked “is it going to snow?” and “are we going to have school tomorrow?”. Not that it does that much here in Atlanta - it snows or ices only about once or twice a year - but it doesn’t take much to close schools here! I (thankfully!) have no administrative responsibilities, and am really cautious about what I say. There are legends around school (based on little if any truth) that I either foresaw some storm, or said there was going to be one and they cancelled school and it didn’t happen and I got in trouble - or whatever!

Thanks again, and please let me know if you have any questions,

Tom

Hey,

I have to say this is an impressive program (gotta say it yet again…heh heh) I figured out why the WXSIMATE wasn’t working for me as I needed to install that NET program. Once I did that I was in business. Importing my data worked without any issues. Although after I uploaded my data, I just did a quick run and got the result below.

FORECAST RUN: DATE TIME TEMP WIND R.HUM %SC %VST VIS PC/HR RN TOT WEATHER
Dec 12 12:00 A 25.0 0 63 100 30 12.0 10 0.00 CLOUDY CH. FRZ.RN
Dec 12 1:00 A 25.7 0 62 100 28 6.6 10 0.00 CLOUDY CHNC.SLEET
Dec 12 2:00 A 26.1 0 62 100 28 6.6 10 0.00 CLOUDY CHNC.SLEET
Dec 12 3:00 A 26.3 0 63 100 28 6.5 10 0.00 CLOUDY CHNC.SLEET
Dec 12 4:00 A 26.6 0 63 100 28 6.5 10 0.00 CLOUDY CH. SLT/FR
Dec 12 5:00 A 26.9 0 63 100 28 6.4 11 0.00 CLOUDY CH. SLT/FR
Dec 12 6:00 A 27.1 0 63 100 28 6.4 10 0.00 CLOUDY CH. SLT/FR
Dec 12 7:00 A 27.3 0 63 100 28 6.4 10 0.00 CLOUDY CH. SLT/FR
Dec 12 8:00 A 27.8 0 62 100 27 6.3 10 0.00 CLOUDY CH. SLT/FR
Dec 12 9:00 A 29.9 0 57 100 27 6.3 10 0.00 CLOUDY CH. SLT/FR
Dec 12 10:00 A 32.7 0 52 100 27 6.3 10 0.00 CLOUDY CHNC. DRZL

I definately did something wrong because at 01:50 I had this on my website (and of course on wdisplay)
Temperature: 18.1

WXSimate reads the current and previous month’s log files. I know this because I have some corruption in my November log files and that’s causing WXSimate some problems at the moment. I think one of the things it does is look at the rainfall over a longer time period to work out how ‘wet’ the atmosphere/ground are in your area.

Jason I guess at the moment you are not gathering Ready Data. This is one thing you need to do manually, I am not sure how to advise you at the moment since I only know how to do it for my location as advised by Tom when he did my customisation. This helps with winds and upper level huidity etc. Because of the way the web site for the Ready data orks you have to do it manually all the time, WXSIMATE will not do it. You have to edit a file and WXSIMATE will include that data in its gathering process. I’ll attach an old ready data for my location and you can probably work out what you need from the website at http://www.arl.noaa.gov/ready/cmet.html enter your lat/long and go from there having taken a look at my ready data. I’ll try to add some more about this data I extract later today if I get time…

Stuart


readydat.txt (6.9 KB)

Thanks for replying Chris and Stewart. I found the problem with why it always shows that is going to rain with the humidity of 100%. The Cloud Coverage was at 100% for some reason. Once I put it to 0% and re-ran it, I got the below output.

Dec 12 10:00 A 37.6 1 44 0 93 10.9 0 0.00 CLEAR
No shower or thunderstorm activity expected
Dec 12 11:00 A 41.8 2 38 0 93 10.9 0 0.00 CLEAR
Dec 12 12:00 P 45.9 2 33 0 93 10.9 0 0.00 CLEAR
Dec 12 1:00 P 48.3 3 30 0 93 10.9 0 0.00 CLEAR
Dec 12 2:00 P 49.1 3 29 0 93 10.9 0 0.00 CLEAR
Dec 12 3:00 P 48.6 3 29 0 93 10.9 0 0.00 CLEAR
Dec 12 4:00 P 47.0 3 31 0 93 10.9 0 0.00 CLEAR

At 10:40 A.M. today my website shows:
Temperature: 36.9