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[IDD #QVD-362496]: Spring has sprung, and people want NLDN lightning data



Hi David,

re: your email address as listed on Unidata lightning web pages
> Thanks.

No worries.

re:
> Google turned up two main pages
> http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/data/lightning.html
> http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/data/lightning/nldn.html
> 
> Can we have consistent email addresses, and verbiage, on both. Please.

Thanks for the URLs.  It turns out that lightning.html URL is the old version
of our NLDN page.  The newer, current page (the second URL that you
provided) is the only one that should be visible to the outside world.
The fact that the old page was still visible was an oversight which
I just corrected.  To make sure that the old page is not longer accessible,
I renamed the page's .html file...

re:
> I agree, adding something about only providing a (near) real time feed would 
> be good.
> I trust you to make good verbiage - thanks in advance.

OK.  I will do some wordsmithing either today or tomorrow and then send
you a note asking you for a review.  We can have a back-and-forth to get
the information as clear as possible.

re:
> We do not have the people power to provide historical data. Our agreement
> with Vaisala is a little fuzzy on this. I think we might be allowed to make
> historical data available for education and research. But we can't do this
> for nothing, and we are not going to charge for it, so it is not likely to
> happen (unless there is direct collaboration with one of our faculty). You
> might have other ideas.

It might be best to simply state that UAlbany does not provide access to
historical NLDN data, period.  Trying to describe the conditions under
which one could possibly get historic data, would no doubt leave casual
readers either confused or believing that they could get data when they
actually could not.

re:
> I cc'd Vaisala in hopes they would provide their preferred link for
> these enquiries. It might be useful for them to have a different ingress
> path for people who discovered the data availability on the Unidata site.

I will incorporate any URL and/or verbiage that the Vaisala folks want
(after review, of course) Hopefully, someone in Vaisala will get back to
us with their preferences early in the week.

re:
> There is talk about Vaisala perhaps moving some of their operations
> to Albany. I envision a day when they will directly make the data
> (both real time, and historical) freely available for research and
> education - or perhaps provide support for the department to do it
> for them. We'll see.

Vaisala making the real-time NLDN data freely-available via LDM-to-LDM
transfer (_not_ the funky tunneled SSH method) would be _most_ welcomed
by the U.S. Unidata university community!  This would make the distribution
and receipt of the NLDN data look/feel the same as WSI's USPLN service.

re:
> Again, thanks for all your work on this. Eventually we'll both retire,
> and I think we both want this to continue.

We (Unidata) definitely want NLDN data to be freely available in
real-time to our U.S. university community sites!

re:
> Just a matter of figuring out how to do it best for all involved.

I agree.

So, are you contemplating retirement?  If yes, we should endeavor to
get together for some beers some time before you retire!  I suggest
somewhere in the Caribbean ;-)

Cheers,

Tom
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Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: QVD-362496
Department: Support IDD
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed