nexrad-render

README

Usage

$ ./nexrad-render -h
nexrad-render generates products from NEXRAD Level 2 (archive 2) data files.

Usage:
nexrad-render [flags]

Flags:
-c, --color-scheme string   color scheme to use. noaa, scope, pink (default "noaa")
-d, --directory string      directory of L2 files to process
-f, --file string           archive 2 file to process
-h, --help                  help for nexrad-render
-l, --log-level string      log level, debug, info, warn, error (default "warn")
-o, --output string         output radar image
-p, --product string        product to produce. ex: ref, vel (default "ref")
-s, --size int32            size in pixel of the output image (default 1024)

Installation

go install github.com/bwiggs/go-nexrad/cmd/nexrad-render@latest

Generating Radar Products

Products are what we know as radar images. Currently there are two supported products. Reflectivity and Velocity.

Nexrad Level II Data Files

You will need the raw nexrad data files to process into radar products. Since they're stored on AWS S3, it's easiest to use the aws-cli tools to download them.

If you want to do an animated gif you'll need multiple data files

Single File - Hurricane Harvey - Full Force

$ aws s3 cp s3://noaa-nexrad-level2/2017/08/25/KCRP/KCRP20170825_235733_V06 .

Multiple Files - Hurricane Harvey - Landfall 2017/8/25

This will copy down all the data for August 25 from the KCRP radar site. WARNING: This is going to be big, 2GB+

$ aws s3 cp --recursive s3://noaa-nexrad-level2/2017/08/25/KCRP KCRP

Generate products from the data file(s)

The default output file is radar.png This will create a single product output.

$ nexrad-render -f KCRP20170825_235733_V06

To process an entire directory. Default output to ./out/

$ nexrad-render -d KCRP

Animated Gifs

Once you have a directory of products, use imagemagick to create an animated gif.

$ convert -loop 0 out/*.png animated.gif

terminal preview

Some terminals support viewing images in them. Use imgcat to view.

$ imgcat animated.gif

One Liner

Generate an animated velocity radar image and preview in terminal

$ nexrad-render -d KCRP -s 512 -p vel && convert out/*.png out/animated.png && imgcat animated.gif