GR2Analyst 2.0 (branded as #chswx Analyst) looking at the KGSP radar Saturday afternoon. (Alas, a quiet day in Charleston.) A big upgrade to one of my go-to radar analysis tools, GR2Analyst 2.0, allowing for a uniform presentation between it, GRLevel3, and GREarth, all tools I use on a regular basis. Here’s what I particularly like about GR2Analyst 2.0 (and, in many cases, the 2.x series of GR products in general):. Easy movement between panel configurations.
The GR radar viewers let you split the screen into 2 and 4 panels to assist in more rapid and accurate diagnosis of radar features, and you can assign up to 8 panel configurations to the number keys 1-8 for quickly flipping through them. For instance, I’ll be looking at radar when I see an area of what looks like rain moving into the area; I can hit the ‘4’ key which brings up a two-panel view of reflectivity and correlation coefficient (a dual-polarization product) which can pretty quickly tell me if I’m dealing with something meteorological or not.
![Granalyst2 Granalyst2](http://www.grlevelx.com/gr2analyst_2/vt_va_step1.png)
GR2Analyst Version 2. GR2Analyst Version 2 is an advanced Nexrad Level II analysis application. Key features of GR2Analyst are: Standard and Super. GR2Analyst has two versions. GR2Analyst 2.00 was released in August, 2013. Please select the GR2Analyst version you're interested in from the links below.
I also have presets saved with four-panel views of varying tilts of a storm’s reflectivity and velocity, a four-panel view for tornado debris detection, as well as a four-panel view which focuses on locating areas of damaging winds and large hail. I have similar presets in GRLevel3 especially surrounding hydrology (rainfall products do not currently exist in GR2Analyst because they are not base data).
Right-click to zoom. Previous versions of the GR products required enabling a separate zoom tool; now, just hold the right mouse button and drag and it zooms in on an area. This works really well on my Magic Mouse; on the trackpad, I more typically just flick upward to zoom in, though if I hold Control and drag, that will have the same effect. A cleaner overall presentation. Being able to choose the widths of lines and add borders and highlights to many of them reduces the potential for confusion between state and county lines when using shades of gray to delineate them.
I also appreciate that cities are outlined and not tied to a specific point and that warnings have similar borders and highlights now. One cool thing in the 2.x GR products is their ability to parse through tornado warning text and apply special highlights if the tornado is reported on the ground or the NWS employs “Tornado Emergency” wording. A long-standing bug with Flash Flood Warnings has been fixed.
In previous versions of GR2Analyst, if a flash flood warning is extended using a Flash Flood Statement, it did not know about it and would remove or fail to rebox the polygon despite the fact the warning would continue for at least part of the area. The 2.x series of GR products fixed this bug and I’m glad I’ll have consistent flash flood polygon display again across all my software packages. I can maintain one set of color tables. At long last, my gigantic GR 1.x color table folder can either be purged or converted to GR 2.x-compatible color table files. Incompatible color tables were a big growing pain during the transition to the new products; I’m glad this transition is over for me.
(People who use vanilla GRLevel2 will still need to maintain older color tables.) The GR 2.x series also ships with the ability to acquire high-resolution background imagery from various sources (depending on zoom level). While beautiful, the Landsat imagery isn’t terribly compatible with a lot of my more advanced color tables designed to help subtle features stand out; I also find that in my Windows XP virtual machine the Landsat background, when combined with the METAR placefile from AllisonHouse, causes a big drag on performance. I’m not sure if I’m going to keep the background enabled in Analyst as a result.
Otherwise, though, performance is great in the VM — really surprisingly good considering it is running against a Core 2 Duo. All in all, the new GR2Analyst will make it that much easier to do what I do over on, and that is pretty outstanding.
(A free upgrade because I bought the dual-polarization addon for 1.x helps, too.).
The last few days have been a whirlwind of activity for me. First, I have been developing on an Applied Meteorology class at New Mexico Tech. On April 29, I present my course to the Science Teaching board and they’ll decide whether to start offering the course! I have been working hard to get this running- it was an idea I originated back in September, and it looks like I may get my chance to show its worth. Second, I am meeting with someone about offering another Albuquerque to Socorro van.
If this runs, I’ll get to come home every (or almost every) night. That would be pretty amazing- come home after a full day’s work, without spending six hours on public transportation, or without adding 200 miles to my car each day. Third, I began cleaning up the shed at work, and moved a go kart from one remote storage shed to another one that is closer. This means that I will be able to work on the go kart, and perhaps have it running soon. It needs to have the air intake/filter replaced, the brake adjusted, the tires pumped up, and the chain remounted.
Fourth, I recently signed up for, which has a number of freelance writing-type jobs. I have applied for two, and will apply for more tomorrow as well. Fifth, I installed a new radar software package on my netbook called GRAnalyst2, which allows me to look at vertical slices of radar data, as well as volumetric plots of storms. I played with it extensively on Thursday during the storms that formed from Missouri to Texas. Sixth, amateur radio band conditions have been strange. Typically, I can talk to Europe in the morning, and Asia in the evening.
Instead, I worked Indonesia at like 6:40 am, and today, I heard several German, Spanish, and Dutch stations on the air in the evening. I worked Asiatic Russia and Pennsylvania (W1AW/3) this afternoon, in spite of the above statement. It has been a busy few days, to say the least. One of these days, I’ll post more old photos on this page.
Stay tuned, it will happen some day.