Welcome to the Unisys Weather Server. To access this server, you must be somewhat versed in WWW and Web Browsers such as Netscape and Internet Explorer to begin with, but here is some information particular to this server. The way to access this server directly is by using the URL (Universal Resource Locator). The URL for this server is http://weather.unisys.com. Once connected to the home page, you can traverse through the available documents, sub-documents and images.
This server is composed of several documents all written in HTML
which is a markup language which allows for the changing of text fonts,
imbedding of images 
, and accessing
of other documents and files through a hyperlink. Some of the
imbedded images are small versions of the real images or thumbnails. Clicking on the image
will bring up its larger counterpart.
Current Infrared Image
NOTE: Because many of these images are cached on the local server, the image that appears may not reflect the latest possible image. The browser will often display the cached image rather than the latest. If the image appears old, hit the Reload button to update the image. Netscape might not refresh the image even with a reload. Using shift-reload might update the image.
This web site contains thousands of weather related images. As a result, links to these images are grouped by data type, image type and region. Links to images generally appear in on each page under a specific heading such as "Regions". The links to the images are listed below.
| Regions |
| GOES East GOES West Hemisphere Cont US New England Mid Atlantic Southeast Midwest Central Plains Southern Plains Northwest Southwest Eastern Canada Western Canada |
In other cases, links to images are denoted by a GIF image icon:
Link to a GIF
image.
Link to an inverted GIF image for
printing.
These icons are followed by the highlighted title of the image. The user may click the mouse button on the icon as well as the highlighted text next to them to bring up the image.
Most GIF images are imbedded in HTML documents in order to allow extra navigation. An explanation of the document format is listed below in the GIF Image Documents section.
Since many of the images are rather complex or contain data of
meteorological value, image explanation pages are needed. Explanation documents are
provided through links like:
More Information
In some documents, access to these documents can be gained by
clicking on the DETAILS icon 
or the INFO icon. 
The images on the site are grouped by data type, image type, or other means. An index on each HTML page provides an easy means for getting to other main HTML pages.
| Unisys Weather |
| Information |
| Analyses |
| Satellite Images Surface Data Upper Air Data Radar Data |
| Forecasts |
| Model Statistics Eta Model NGM Model AVN Model RUC Model ECMWF Model MRF Model |
| Miscellaneous |
| Hurricane Data Archive of Images USGS Maps |
Since these images are updated continuously, a status update file is available to track the status of the GIF generation. A line with update time will be generated for each image during the update. When the full update is complete, the message "Update completed at ...".
Update in progress on 00Z 24 JUL 98 at 20:48 UTC sat_sfc_map done at 20:49 UTC sat_vis_hem done at 20:49 UTC ... Update completed at 20:58 UTC
As with the small images, these update statements may need to be updated with the Reload option.
These are just hyperlinks to other documents or another location inside the current document. In some cases you can forgo the hyperlink by using the scrollbar on the document. Many hyperlinks are denoted by arrow icons:
Info -
this moves a sub-document containing general information or news
Image - this moves a
sub-document containing images
Misc - this moves a
sub-document containing miscellaneous or yet to be developed products
Index - this moves to a
sub-document index
Index - this moves back to
an index in the previous document.
The user may click the mouse button on these icons as well as the highlighted text next to them to move to the sub-document.
GIF files can either be stand alone (link to a GIF file) or imbedded in a HTML page. The HTML documents allow for added navigation of other related images. There are two navigation bars available on the page:
| Back |
Home |
which is under the Unisys logo. The Back link takes you to the HTML document for that image type. For example, for IR satellite images, this would be "satellite/infrared.html". In some cases, there will be link from other locations to this page such as from text forecasts. This back link won't take you to those pages, only to the image type page. The Home link always takes you to the Unisys Weather Home page.
The second navigation bar provides links to similar images:
| PLOT | pres | sfc | 1000 | 850 | 700 | 500 | 300 | rh | 4panel | TIME | Initial | 6hr | 12hr | 18hr | 24hr | 30hr | 36hr | 42hr | 48hr | 4panel | Loop |
In this case, there are different plot types: sfc, 1000, 850, etc and different forecast hours: Initial, 6hr, etc available. The current type is displayed in red: pres 18hr. There are a couple of special plot types:
Loop -
An animated GIF image or loop of several images over time.
Inv - An inverted GIF
image suitable for printing.
-1hr - Images
generated in previous hours (image archive).
Info - A link to information
on the current image.
©
Unisys Corp. 1998
For more information on this server, contact Dan
Vietor at devo@ks.unisys.com
Last modified January 22, 1999