IEM Data in Gibson Ridge Placefile format

Gibson Ridge Software develops a very popular set of RADAR data visualization programs. These placefiles can be freely used for educational use. Use of the non government data "on-air" by media is strictly not allowed without permission of the provider.

Placefile Range Ring Generator

Contributed by Zach Hiris, this generates a static placefile with range rings specified at the given distance for a point.

Location Label:
Latitude (degrees N)
Longitude (degrees E)
RingMilesLabel (use \n for line feed)Red (0-255)Green (0-255) Blue (0-255)Alpha (0-255)
1
2 (0 disables)
3 (0 disables)

Download Filename:

v3 SupportTitleDescription
No Iowa DOT Truck Locations https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/request/grx/iadot_trucks.txt
Notes: Locations of Iowa DOT Snow Plows.
No Iowa Winter Road Conditions https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/request/grx/roadcond.php
Notes: Observations provided by the Iowa State Patrol.
No Iowa ASOS Data https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/request/grx/asos.php
Notes: none at this time
No Iowa RWIS Data https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/request/grx/rwis.php
Notes: Could use some data presentation improvements (TODO)
No IEM Webcam Overview https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/request/grx/webcams.php?overview
Notes: This layer provides the locations and direction that the webcam is looking. This layer should be used along with the individual network layers... There aren't bandwidth concerns with this layer.
No KCCI-TV Webcams https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/request/grx/webcams.php?network=KCCI
Notes: You will not want to use this on a low bandwidth connection as all of the webcam images are loaded every 1-5 minutes. Please only use this layer when you are using the data! Thanks...
No KCRG-TV Webcams https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/request/grx/webcams.php?network=KCRG
Notes: You will not want to use this on a low bandwidth connection as all of the webcam images are loaded every 1-5 minutes. Please only use this layer when you are using the data! Thanks...
Yes NEXRAD Level3 Attributes https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/request/grx/l3attr.txt
Notes: This is a placefile of the level3 NEXRAD storm attributes. This may be useful when looking at level2 data. You can optionally pass a nexrad 3 character ID to limit the display to a certain NEXRAD. ie) l3attr.txt?nexrad=DMX. Otherwise, the service will utilize the longitude and latitude passed to the server by the Gibson Ridge Client to limit the displayed attributes.
Additional Query Parameters: You can provide additional URL parameters to limit the returned attributes. For example, l3attr.txt?tvs will only return attrs with TVS flagged. l3attr.txt?poh=50 will only return attrs with a probability of hail at least of 50%. The third option is l3attr.txt?meso=4 will return attrs with at least a MESO value of 4. A fourth option is to limit the max_size of hail via l3attr.txt?max_size=1. You can combine these all in any order if you want along with the nexrad value.
No SPC Watch by County https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/request/grx/watch_by_county.php?
Notes: This is a placefile of the union of counties within a Storm Prediction Center watch. You can optionally pass an option alpha=255 to set the alpha value for the used color. This value is a number between 0 and 255. The service uses the official NWS colors for Severe Thunderstorm Watch (#DB7093) and Tornado Watch (yellow).
No NWS Warning TIME...MOT...LOC (TOR) https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/request/grx/time_mot_loc.txt?
Notes: This provides lines indicating the path of travel for tornado warnings based on the coding within the warning.
No NWS Warning TIME...MOT...LOC (TOR+SVR) https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/request/grx/time_mot_loc.txt?all
Notes: This provides lines indicating the path of travel for tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings based on the coding within the warning.
No NWS Warning TIME...MOT...LOC (Historical) (TOR+SVR) https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/request/grx/time_mot_loc.txt?all&valid=2020-05-25T00:00Z
Notes: Provides any TIME...MOT...LOC tracks for a four hour window of time around the given UTC timestamp. This uses the Gibson Ridge TimeRange option to sync the data with RADAR display. You'd have to manually add this placefile for each four hour window of time you have interest in!