Polar Blended Hydrology Products Metadata Update

April 20, 2022

The Global Blended Hydrology (Polar Satellite) products currently flowing over the Satellite Broadcast Network (SBN) will undergo an update on or around Tuesday, April 26, 2022. These products include Blended Total Precipitable Water (TPW), Percent of Normal TPW, and Blended Rain Rate (see image below). These are found in AWIPS under Satellite -> Polar Derived Products Imagery. Click here for a TOWR-S dataset guide on the polar blended hydrology products.

Blended Rain Rate Product

In this update, NESDIS will update a metadata item that is used by AWIPS to ingest the data. There is otherwise no change to the content of the product. This change was announced on March 24 in Service Change Notice (SCN) 22-31: Metadata Update in Blended Hydro Products Suite on the Satellite Broadcast Network on or about April 26, 2022.

Because of the change to the products, a new configuration file is required for AWIPS to process the data. This configuration file is included in TOWR-S RPM Version 22, which the AWIPS Network Control Facility (NCF) released to AWIPS sites on February 8, 2022. Once your site has this RPM installed, the SBN product change will be transparent and no further action is required. If your site needs to install TOWR-S RPM v22, refer to the installation instructions linked here.

Please reach out to John Evans (john.d.evans@noaa.gov) on the TOWR-S team with any questions or for assistance regarding the TOWR-S RPM configurations. You can also contact the team in the “towr-s” room on NWSChat.