Erin Rhoades

by Erin Rhoades
2023 Unidata summer intern

This summer, I had the incredible opportunity to spend it as a Unidata intern. My main goal for the summer was to solidify my own fundamental Python skills, but I wanted to do it in a way that would also benefit others. My mentor, Drew Camron, and the rest of the Unidata staff dedicated their time to help me achieve this goal during my internship.

Jessica Souza

During my internship, I worked with the Unidata THREDDS team. My intentions this summer were to learn Java, improve my coding skills, and have experience using it in real world applications. I began my journey by converting existing unit tests for the netCDF-Java library, which is tightly linked to the THREDDS Data Server (TDS) code, to the JUnit Java testing framework. Once I got this practice with Java and had a working development environment, I was able to start working on my summer project.

In this MetPy Monday video tutorial, you'll learn how to create visually appealing maps featuring major US cities using the popular SimpleMaps CSV file. The tutorial will walk you through the step-by-step process of importing the CSV file into Python, extracting the relevant city data, and using cartopy mapping functionalities. You'll discover how to plot the cities on a map with customizable markers, filter based on population size, and add labels for easy identification.

The week we cover using the Siphon Python library to access sounding data from three prominent archives: Wyoming, Iowa State, and IGRA upper air soundings. The video takes viewers through a step-by-step guide on utilizing Siphon's capabilities to retrieve data from these archives, providing valuable insights into the differences in data availability and coverage across various years. Never wonder which archive is best for your research objective again!

This week we step back and talk about how to get started with Python and MetPy before the semester starts!