In this lesson, we'll discuss colors, lines, and legends. 

We are going to practice loading maps and adjusting styles to make these maps more functional. Let's start off by loading a base reflectivity product on the WFO scale. So we are on the WFO scale. So let's go up to the kcri menu. And let's go down to kcri z, then over and up to 0.5z best res and let's go ahead and load that one in. Now before we proceed, let's go ahead and dim down the radar display, so that when we add our map overlays, it'll be easier to read. So to do that, we're gonna want to press the ctrl key and the i key on your keyboard at the same time, and this window should appear. Nest, let's lower the brightness from 100%, let's drag it down to  about 60%. Ok, now once you've done that, go ahead and close out the window. 

And next, let's load up the map overlays. To do that, go up to the maps menu, and the first one we're gonna add is county warning areas. Now to actually see the map legend text appear, we're gonna want to toggle over from the product legend to the map legend. And to accomplish this, we use the enter key on the numeric side of your keyboard. So go ahead and press the enter key. Ok and you should see the map legend appear. Next let's add some more map overlays. Go up to the maps menu and let's select cities. Let's go up to the maps menu again and let's select county names. And let's go up to the maps menu one more time and select interstates. Ok now the county names and the city names are a little bit small, so let's go ahead and increase the magnification. So to do that, go up to the mag menu, and let's change it from 1.0 to 1.5. And as you see that looks much better, easier to read. 

Next, let's customize the map overlays. First, we're gonna want to put a border around the county warning areas. To do that, we're gonna want to right click and hold on county warning areas. And then go to change color and select coral. Ok now let's make the borders a little bit bolder. To do that, right click and hold again on county warning areas, and go up to line width. And by default it's one pixel but let's go ahead and double it, make it two pixels. Ok, and that stands out a little bit better Next, let's customize the cities. Right click and hold on cities and let's go ahead and change color, and make the cities the color yellow. Next, let's make the county names cyan. So right click and hold on county names. Go up to change color and select cyan. Next, let's finish it off with the interstates. Right click and hold. Go up to change color and let's make the interstates the color burlywood. 

Ok, now let's use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in on the supercell. And with these locations we can see that the supercell is located mostly in Canadian county. The tornado is very close to the town of El Reno. And the storm is basically straddling interstate 40, which runs west to east. Let's zoom out and let's discuss an interesting feature of AWIPS-2 called progressive disclosure. Now what it is, is basically when you zoom in, you can see more detail. And as you keep zooming in, you see more cities pop up. And if you zoom in even further, you see little communities pop up. Now let's say you didn't want to completely zoom in to see more location pop up. So what we can do instead is increase the density of the cities. So let's zoom back out, and as you see we have this many cities. But let's say we wanted more cities and didn't want to zoom in. Let's right click and hold on cities, then go up to density and change the density from 1 to 1.25. And you should see more cities pop up like so. 

Finally, let's discuss shading. So we can actually shade different things on the map. Now to demonstrate that, let's use the county warning areas map overlay. Let's right click and hold on county warning areas, and go up to shade. And let's shade based on WFO. So as you see, the different WFO's became shaded with a different color. That's very bright and our radar display is hidden, so let's go ahead and change the opacity level. So we're gonna want to right click and hold on county warning areas again. Select shade and let's go down to where it says set opacity. And it's currently at 100%. Let's tone it down to about 35%. Once you've done that, press Ok. Now our radar data is kind of masked a little bit. So what we can do is we can turn the brightness on the radar up from 60%, but this is a good start and a good example of shading. So, while these colors may still be too vibrant and busy for warning operations, you can use shading to make screen grabs for post-storm analysis for example, or research. 

So as you can see, there's more to AWIPS-2 than just regular map overlays. You can really control the depth and customize your display to accommodate many different environments.