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Welcome to the RTMA/URMA VLab community!

The purpose of this community is to facilitate feedback and discussion on the RTMA/URMA system. 

Meeting notes are available under the Google Drive Folder linked above.

To learn more about our next upgrade, see the asset publication below.

Use the System Overview to learn more about the system in general.

Use the forum to ask questions about the system and join the discussion with other users and the development team. 

Note that there are two forums: one for precipitation issues and one for all other variables.

You can post to the precip issues forum by sending an email to qpe.rtma.urma.feedback.vlab@noaa.gov.  For all other issues, you can post by sending an email to rtma.feedback.vlab@noaa.gov.  Please note that you must have a user account to post to the forum.  If you do not have an account, please contact matthew.t.morris@noaa.gov.

We recently added the ability for NWS Regional or WFO personnel to request that stations be removed from the analysis.  To access this, click on the "Station Reject Lists and Requests" tab.

There has been recent interest in knowing exact station locations, especially those of METAR sites.  Our METAR information table is under the "METAR Location Info" tab.

Users may also be interested in the National Blend of Models VLab community.

We appreciate any feedback on how this page or community could be improved.  You can submit such feedback via the above email handle or forum.

 

What's New

December 2017 Implementation Summary

Document

Overview of upgrade scheduled for December 2017. Note that this was originally scheduled for October 2017, but has been pushed back due to technical issues.

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More Details
Modified Date
10/31/17

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[aor-rtma] Real Time Station Flagging: Now Available via VLab

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SL
Steven Levine, modified 7 Years ago.

[aor-rtma] Real Time Station Flagging: Now Available via VLab

Youngling Posts: 174 Join Date: 11/13/14 Recent Posts
RTMA users and NWS SOO Community,

We know that in recent months/years there have been requests for us to flag/remove stations (especially mesonet stations) in RTMA that we have been unable to honor because of how our ob processing is set up.  Now, that is no more - we can now flag ALL stations in near-real time!  This is done via editing of the SDM's reject list file.

This is a powerful new tool, and we want to be organized in tracking what stations are flagged, why they are flagged, and when they can be un-flagged if possible.  To do that, we have set up a page on our VLab site (accessible to NOAA personnel only - login with your LDAP/email credentials).

If you click on the "Station Reject Lists and Requests" tab, you will see a current list of flagged stations, and a form to submit new requests for stations to be flagged.  Please note that we want all requests for flagging to come from a SOO/DOH or someone at regional scientific services - this was a request from the group that helped to set this site up.

When a request is submitted, we will review at EMC and then, if needed, flag the station at the SDM's desk.  Once we flag a station, the flag will take effect immediately until we remove it.

Please note that flagging is a manual process.  We can only flag stations during the business day, as this requires someone to go to the SDM's terminal.  So please only flag stations that you know want withheld from the analysis for at least a few days.

We hope this new feature will greatly improve the RTMA by allowing you all to identify and remove unrepresentative or malfunctioning stations from the analysis.

Please reach out to us via the the RTMA VLab forum or email us rtma.feedback.vlab@noaa.gov if you have any questions or issues with the form or site.

Thanks,
Steve Levine and Jacob Carley
EMC

 

BS
Bill Schneider, modified 7 Years ago.

RE: [aor-rtma] Real Time Station Flagging: Now Available via VLab

Youngling Posts: 8 Join Date: 9/24/12 Recent Posts
Thanks for working on the ability to reject/accept stations in RTMA/URMA. I was looking at the KML files containing the rejected/accepted stations and noticed that virtually all of the stations are plotted in a slightly wrong location. For example, the Portland ASOS (KPDX) is not located in the Columbia River (see attached image). I was wondering if this was an issue with the precision the station locations are kept in your database, how the KML file was generated, or how it is plotted on Google Earth? This has implications for the quality of the analysis, especially in areas of complex terrain like ours.
 
Thanks
Bill

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  • 2011 RTMA Paper (Weather and Forecasting)

    The most recent peer-reviewed paper on the RTMA. Published in Weather and Forecasting in 2011.
    7 Visits

  • Public RTMA/URMA Viewer

    Another viewer of the current RTMA/URMA, with an archive going back 24 hours. This version is open to the public, but does not contain information about the (many) restricted obs used.
    54 Visits

  • RAP downscaling conference preprint (23rd IIPS)

    This link is to a presentation from the (then) RUC group on how the downscaling process works. Although we now use the RAP, HRRR, and NAM, the logic of the downscaling code is mostly unchanged from this point.
    2 Visits