Chart Creator for MAC?

[RobWESTPACWX]

I am stumped, I am currently attempting to find a program that will allow me to draw a weather map ( fronts, lows highs etc) that would allow me to overlay a sat shot for a MAC operating system. I have come across a slew of programs for windows but nothing has worked on my macbook.

So I am turning to you storm2k, can you help me out?

[supercane]

Simplest thing I could find was a program called Frontpaint on the Digital Atmosphere site that would let you draw fronts on a background image, but it seems pretty limited and is no longer maintained:
http://www.amalthys.com/frontpaint/

Better would be to use one of Unidata's programs, IDV, McIDAS V, or GEMPAK. Although the documentation is mediocre to inadequate, the products are more powerful. Unidata requires free registration before downloading anything. Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) and McIDAS are the easier to use. They both run in Java and are therefore cross-platform. You can download satellite images, surface data, ATCF data, and more, calculate derived values, and use rudimentary drawing tools. Here is an example from today (Warning, large file, features drawn for illustrative purposes and not meant to indicate correct synoptic features):


Finally, you could choose GEMPAK. It is open source, but it requires compiling the program from source for any operating system (at least until next year, when NAWIPS II, which will be Java based, is released). In addition, you would have to set up data sources unless you are affiliated with a university. However, the product generation tools in NMap are superior to those in McIDAS or IDV, and in fact the GEMPAK tools are what the NWS uses for their analyses. Here is an image from the GEMPAK tutorial to give you a taste of what's available.


Hope this helps.

[RobWESTPACWX]

I downloaded the IDV and McIdas, yet I can't figure out how to overlay the sat shot...

But this is pretty awesome! Thanks!

[supercane]

To get the satellite data:
1. In the Dashboard click the Data Chooser tab.
2. In the left panel click Images under Sat & Radar
3. For West Pac images pick satepsanone.nesdis.noaa.gov as the server and click the Connect button.
4. For the West Pac, you'll pick either
-MTGLOB* for MTSAT full disk images
-MTNHEM* for MTSAT N Hem images
-FY2D-CH* for FY2D images
where * is a placeholder. Look at the Channel descriptor to see what the image is (e.g., vis, IR, WV)
5. By default, the program downloads only a 1000 x 1000 image, which is not the whole satellite image. Either change the center to the point of interest and/or increase the image size to get more of the image. (This confused me to no end for a while, as I was wondering why I kept getting only a small part of a hemispheric or full disk view.). Also pick how many images you want in the Times dropdown box.
6. Press the Add Source button to get the images.
Here is an image of this process.

Once you download the images, you will often want to change the map projection.

Hope this helps. Experiment with the different data sources to get surface METAR or other data.

[TYNI]

Rob - thanks for asking this question - I'm on a Mac as well, and Supercane, thanks for all the great information!