I queried the NWS Baltimore/Washington D.D. forecast office about the
differences between AFM and PFM and received this reply:
Hello,
Thanks for writing. The AFMs and PFMs are set to a national standard.
So they should be the same across all the forecast offices.
Our Directive that talks about these products, as well as links to
format decoding, are in this NWS Directive
<https://www.nws.noaa.gov/directives/sym/pd01005003curr.pdf> between pages
10-12.
Hope that helps.
Chris Strong
NWS Baltimore/Washington
The reference Chris sites contains links to AFM/PFM format PDFs and the
element specifications PDF for both reports. The only difference between
the two that I could detect was in lines 2 and 3 of the report (Description
and Location in the PFM; zone and included cities in the AFM).
On Wednesday, October 7, 2020 at 8:28:01 PM UTC-4 etji...@gmail.com wrote:
> Here is the spec on AFMs from the NWS:
> https://www.weather.gov/media/notification/dir/AFM_Format.pdf
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 5:57 PM John Kline <jo...@johnkline.com> wrote:
>
>> Absent a spec on area forecast matrices, and absent any problem reports
>> on point forecast matrices, there isn’t much to go on here.
>>
>> On Oct 7, 2020, at 2:35 PM, Michael Bruski <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Hi John,
>>
>> I've looked at several forecast matrices from my local and surrounding
>> NWS forecast offices and haven't seen anything format wise that would lead
>> me to think they would cause a problem for the forecast extension. I have
>> selected several different AFMs and see they parse fine. But I ran into
>> this issue with my local AFM and spent several hours trying to track down
>> the cause. The issue is not with the matrix itself but with text
>> preceeding the DTG. To test further, I put a cheap hack into the parse
>> loop so that date2ts() isn't called if the first word in 'line' is
>> 'Including'. This actually works (in this specific instance) and a valid
>> forecast is produced. What other lines of text might NWS put in the header
>> preceeding the DTG, I just don't know. The URLs mentioned in forecast.py
>> are dead links so I couldn't find any specifics on decoding the reports.
>>
>> I'm not terribly comfortable programming in python so I'm not sure the
>> best approach to work this issue but sending bad data to time.mktime() via
>> date2ts() is probably bad unless there is a way to trap the error. Not
>> meant to criticize... just my thoughts on how to make it better.
>>
>> Mike/AJ9X
>>
>> On Wednesday, October 7, 2020 at 4:24:56 PM UTC-4 jo...@johnkline.com
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Perhaps Area Forecast Matrix responses can’t be treated just like Point
>>> Forecast Matrix responses. AFMs are only supported to the extent that they
>>> provide an identically formatted response as the PFM response.
>>>
>>> What do you know about AFMs and the differences between them and PFMs?
>>>
>>> On Oct 7, 2020, at 12:18 PM, Michael Bruski <michael...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> First of all, I am running WeeWX 4.1.1 with forecast extension 3.4.0b10.
>>>
>>> I had recently managed to use a Area Forecast Matrix for one location
>>> and that is working fine. Recently I tried to setup a second location to
>>> use the AFM (different LID and FOID) and it fails to get a forecast even
>>> though I see it in the web browser using the URL that forecast.py uses.
>>> After careful application of some trace print statements, I see the
>>> forecast is succesfully download from the FOID and that the forecast for
>>> the specified LID is also located and extracted but nothing gets parsed.
>>> Below is a copy of my trace output from the log:
>>>
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> forecast downloaded successfully from '
>>> http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&product=AFM&format=txt&issuedby=LWX
>>> '
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'MDZ005-072100-'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Carroll-'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Including the cities of Eldersburg and Westminster'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> '137 PM EDT Wed Oct 7 2020'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS: ''
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Date Wed 10/07/20 Thu 10/08/20 Fri
>>> 10/09/20'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'EDT 3hrly 05 08 11 14 17 20 23 02 05 08 11 14 17 20 23 02 05 08 11 14
>>> 17 20'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'UTC 3hrly 09 12 15 18 21 00 03 06 09 12 15 18 21 00 03 06 09 12 15 18
>>> 21 00'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS: ''
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Max/Min 75 77 80 47 48 52 65 67 70 42 44 48 68
>>> 70 73'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Temp 76 76 68 61 56 51 50 60 65 64 55 50 47 45 45 61 68
>>> 67 59'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Dewpt 52 52 53 50 48 46 45 45 43 42 43 42 41 40 41 45 45
>>> 46 47'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'RH 43 43 59 67 74 83 83 58 45 45 64 74 79 82 86 56 43
>>> 47 64'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Wind dir W W NW NW NW NW NW NW NW NW NW NW W W W SW SW
>>> SW S'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Wind spd 19 17 10 6 5 5 6 11 12 10 5 3 1 2 1 4 6
>>> 8 4'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Wind gust 33 31'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Clouds CL CL SC FW FW CL CL FW CL CL CL CL FW FW FW FW FW
>>> FW SC'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'PoP 12hr 20 20 0
>>> 0 0'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'QPF 12hr 0 0 0
>>> 0 0'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Rain shwrs S S'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS: ''
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS: ''
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Date Sat 10/10/20 Sun 10/11/20 Mon 10/12/20 Tue 10/13/20'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'EDT 6hrly 02 08 14 20 02 08 14 20 02 08 14 20 02 08 14 20'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'UTC 6hrly 06 12 18 00 06 12 18 00 06 12 18 00 06 12 18 00'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS: ''
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Min/Max 54 75 56 69 53 66 54 68'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Temp 55 56 73 66 61 58 66 60 56 55 63 59 56 56 65 61'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Dewpt 50 54 59 60 59 56 55 54 54 53 56 56 56 56 58 57'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'PWind dir S SW SW SE E E E SE'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Wind char LT GN LT LT GN GN LT LT'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Avg clouds SC B1 B1 B1 B1 B1 B1 B1 B2 B2 B2 B2 B2 B2 B2 B1'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'PoP 12hr 5 20 30 30 40 40 30 30'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> 'Rain shwrs S C C C C C C C C C C C C'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS: ''
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> '$$'
>>> Oct 7 14:36:45 server weewx[3014] INFO user.forecast: NWSThread: NWS:
>>> successfully extracted forecast for 'MDZ005'
>>>
>>> Examining NWSParseForecast, nothing is parsed until the Date/Time Group
>>> (a line with 7 tokens) is located. In the above AFM another line preceeds
>>> the DTG which also happens to have 7 tokens. I think this line is being
>>> passed to date2ts() which in turn fails and causes the parser to stop
>>> looking for further input. I didn't see a way to raise the issue on GitHub
>>> so I thought I would bring this up here.
>>>
>>> Mike/AJ9X
>>>
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>>
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