AWeather was created in the summer of 2008 and functions as a NEXRAD Level II radar display program. The goal of this application is to fulfill a need through providing ample weather information without excessive cost and size that is not limited to the Linux operating system.

It is written in a standard GTK+/GObject architecture and features an interactive display utilizing Grits and OpenGL technologies.

The software source code is available for download at git://pileus.org/aweather.

AWeather relies upon the following dependencies: gtk+ 2.18 or later, libsoup 2.26 or later, bzip, rsl 1.42 or later, and others.

Packaged versions of the software are currently available for Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu, Microsoft Windows, and Mac OSX operating systems.

The program currently provides data viewing from the standard two dimensional plan view to user-defined three-dimensional dynamic views of current and recent radar data.

The software was developed and is maintained by Andy Spencer. He may be contacted through e-mail at andy753421@gmail.com and chat through IRC at #pileus on irc.freenode.net.

AWeather is provided as free software according to the terms of the GNU General Public License (version 3 or later) as published by the Free Software Foundation (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/).

AWeather displays U.S. National Weather Service NEXt generation RADar (NEXRAD) Level II data. This is the highest resolution form of radar data available in the public domain and consists of multiple tilts of data updated every 5 to 10 minutes depending on the current scan mode of each radar.

The following Level II data types are supported by this program:

Level II data has been available through private weather data vendors for some time but recently has been generously provided by some universities.

AWeather requires an active internet connection along with a data source in order to retrieve, decode and display current or recent radar data.

The default radar feed is publically accessible thanks to Iowa State University and is located at: http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/data/nexrd2/raw/.

AWeather also displays some severe weather alerts provided by the NOAA weather alerts feed.

When run under Linux, AWeather can interface with the GPSd location services to track and display the user’s current location.

AWeather consists of a graphical user interface window that contains a file menu bar, a button bar, a date and time side bar, a large map and data viewing pane and a bottom data status bar.

The program file menu consists of 5 entries:

The program button bar contains 6 options:

The date and time side bar resides on the right side of the program window, it contains:

On program startup and when zoomed far from the earth’s surface AWeather displays a national radar composite image.

Each available radar site is displayed on the map using the name of a nearby major city. Clicking on the city label will activate the radar site and center it in the viewer.

As the user zooms closer to the earth AWeather will automatically activate nearby radar sites.

The radar data will be plotted on the map while the scan and product information will be displayed at the bottom of the program.

All active radar sites will show as tabs while site’s available tilt and product data will display to the right of the tab.

Simply click on a button to display that product/tilt in the map window.

An isosurface slider is shown below the product/tilt buttons. Slide the selector to reveal the rendered isosurface structure of reflectivity data.

A color scale will automatically appear at the top left corner of the map window corresponding to each available product.

When the alert plugin is enabled, AWeather will automatically shade each county that is under a weather alert in a color corresponding to the type of alert.

For storm based warnings, AWeather will also draw a polygon representing the warning area.

Individual alert types can be enabled and disabled by clicking on the toggle button in the alert tab at the bottom of the screen.

To view more information about a particular alert, click on one the shaded county or inside the polygon warning area in the viewing pane. This will bring up the alert details dialog with a tab for each alert that is active for the location that was clicked.

The alert dialog displays the alert title and valid time along with the text descriptions provided by the weather service. Clicking the "Full Text" button will open the full text of the alert in a web browser.

AWeather supports the use of the mouse and keyboard commands to change the map window settings.

When the map is rotated, a red and white compass in the top right corner shows the current direction of North. Clicking on the compass will reset the rotation so that north points toward the top of the screen and the viewer is pointed towards the ground.

The following command line options can help advanced users take full advantage of the AWeather program:

aweather [-hoaf] [-d level] [-s site] [-t time]

The author intends to develop additional features in the future as time and conditions allow.

Some of these enhancements include: