[mapserver-users] GFS GRIB data in MS

[bluecap]

Hello list,

I'm developing an aeronautical & flight planning webGIS with MS 6,
Openlayers & Postgres. Although I have found my way in displaying
aeronautical information (navaids/airways/areas/metars/wind barbs etc) with
the valuable help of this list, I'm now in the process of displaying winds
aloft (winds at various pressure levels), and would like to ask if the
workflow I've come up to makes sense (and if anyone has some better
ideas...).

The wind data will be taken from grib files through NOAA (GFS model). The
problem is that the wind data are composed of two variables, the east-west
and the north-south velocities, which must be combined to provide the final
wind data (eg wind from 330 degrees, 25 knots). I have found the (simple)
trigonometry to do this part.

Now, the workflow I'm thinking is as follows:
1) download the grib file of the specific date and forecast depth from
NOMADS to my local HD (approx. 30MB)
2) convert it to a shapefile, with the command line app "degrib" from NOAA
3) dump it to Postgres
4) perform the calculation for every wind point
5) store the wind barb character to the DB (in order to have a small layer
in the mapfile, I take the barb as a character stored in the DB, along with
its angle, and draw it - works very well in my metars)

The million-dollar question concerns steps 1 and 2. Has anybody done this
before in a different way to provide me with some pointers?

Thank you
Dimitrios Simos

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