McIDAS-XCD ETA MOS Addendum
Software and Instructions

17 February 2004

This is the fourth addendum to the May 2003 McIDAS-XCD upgrade, version 2003. The first three were dated 30 May 2003, 13 November 2003, and 19 December 2003, respectively.

On Tuesday 24 February 2004 the National Weather Service will make several changes to MOS products based on ETA model output. See http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/synop/changes/eta32notif.htm for details. This addendum is necessary in order to accommodate the addition of seven new fields (CIG, OBV, POS, POZ, SNW, TYP, VIS), allow for NCEP's future extension from 60 to 72 hours, and several ETA MOS station changes.

Installation of this addendum prior to 24 February will not cause any problems with data processing or accessibility. Failure to install this addendum by 24 February will not result in any interruption or loss of data; however your ETA MOS MD files will not contain the extended forecast hours nor the additional fields. The software changes in this addendum will be included in the May 2004 McIDAS-XCD upgrade.

Note: Because you will need to delete or move the current day's ETA MOS MD file (step 11 below), we recommend that you install this addendum soon after 00 UTC in order to delete or move the file before it contains most of the day's data.

Required Action:

Complete the steps below to obtain and install the addendum.

1. Shut down -XCD and wait for all associated processes to exit.
2. Login to the McIDAS-XCD workstation as user mcidas.
3. Download the file DCETAMOS to the ~mcidas/data directory. It will replace the existing version of the file. This new schema file contains the seven new fields as well as additional rows for the extended forecast hours and will be used to determine the internal format for future ETA MOS MD files.
4. Download the file STNDB.CORE to the ~mcidas/data directory. It will replace the existing version of the file. This new station database file has been updated with the changes to the ETA MOS stations. If desired, you may also copy the file to the ~mcidas/data directory on your client workstations so users can list or plot the new stations with commands MOSRPT LIST, STNLIST and STNPLOT.
5. Log on to the McIDAS-XCD workstation as user oper.
6. The ETA MOS configuration file must be updated so that data from new ETA MOS stations will be decoded. To do so, edit the file ~oper/mcidas/data/ETAMOS.CFG and make the following changes:

   1. Locate the line WMO=FOUS and change it to WMO=FOUS FOAK FOPA
   2. Locate the next line MINPRD 44 and change it to MINPRD 44 47 40
   3. Locate the next line MAXPRD 49 and change it to MAXPRD 49 49 40
   4. Locate the line NROWS=38 and change it to NROWS=42
   5. Locate the line NCOLS=1400 and change it to NCOLS=2000

7. Download the file m0etamos.for to the ~oper/mcidas/xcd2003/src directory. It will replace the existing version of the file. This is the ETA MOS decoder which has been modified to decode the additional data and place it into the ETA MOS MD files.
8. Rebuild -XCD so that the new ETA MOS decoder will be used.

   Type: cd ~oper/mcidas/xcd2003
   Type: . ./xcd_init
   Type: cd src
   Type: make install.bin

9. Start a McIDAS-X session under the oper account, then register the new ETA MOS MD file schema.

   Type: SCHE DCETAMOS

10. The current limit for the number of stations allowed in the ETA MOS rapid access text file is 1400. The addition of the Alaskan, Hawaiian, and Pacific Island stations puts the total over that limit. For this reason you will need to re-create your rapid access text files with a larger capacity. Run the command below from a McIDAS-X session under the oper account to delete files ETAMOS.RAP and ETAMOS.RAT and create a new ETAMOS.RAP file. The new ETAMOS.RAT file will be created as soon as the next ETA MOS message is received.

    Type: BILDTEXT INIT ETAMOS.RAP ETAMOS.RAT 2000 2 C4 2 12 80 ETAMOS X 48

11. Delete or move the current day's ETA MOS MD file. You must do this because the updated ETA MOS decoder will try to write to the MD file using the updated schema, which contains the seven new fields. MD files that were created using the previous version of the schema do not contain those new fields. (Note: You can determine the file range for your ETA MOS MD files by the value for MDF in ETAMOS.CFG.)
12. From a McIDAS-X session running under the oper account, restart -XCD.

    Type: STARTXCD

    New MD files will be generated automatically when the next ETA MOS message is recieved.

This completes the instructions. If you have any questions, send email to the McIDAS Help Desk.