[aprssig] "The New" WXSVR and Canada

[Brad [VE3BSM]]

My memory's a bit foggy on the discussions, since they were several years
ago. I have this vague recollection that there was a "disconnect" between
the actual bulletins provided by Environment Canada and the shapes. I think
it boiled down to "somebody" doing the work as you describe below, and at
that time (and probably still), the people most interested in Canadian data
were primarily concerned with the warnings, and less with the shapes. I
don't recall anybody involved with the early discussion even knowing if
drawings as you describe exist anywhere (at least in a form the average
citizen could get at). I know Dale and some others had looked into this much
more deeply than I, and eventually gave up.

 

Either way, *just* getting the actual warnings would probably make most
people who care very happy. Heck, for all I know, I'm the only Canadian left
who does care. :-)

 

Brad.

VE3BSM

 

From: Stephen H. Smith [mailto:wa8lmf2 at aol.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 17:08
To: TAPR APRS Mailing List
Subject: Re: [aprssig] "The New" WXSVR and Canada

 

Brad [VE3BSM] wrote: 

 

Previously, Dale's server provided warnings (but not shapes) for some or all
of Canada. I know because I was gating warnings for Ontario (WTOSVR) out to
RF. I recall Dale & I exchanging e-mail on his work to being able to send
out the Canadian warnings (and the near-impossibility of doing shapefiles
for Canada thanks to the Canadian government).


Why should that be "near-impossble"?    The shapes are just vector-drawing
outlines, similar to what Adobe Illustrator, AutoCad or Corel Draw create,
tagged with absolute lat/long coordinates rather than inches or cm from some
arbitrary origin point.

Even if these shapes are not available for effortless download from some
government agency, it should be possible to load a scanned image of a paper
map (or bitmap image from a website) into a vector-oriented program like
Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator, MapInfo or ArcView as the bottom layer.  Then
trace the boundaries of whatever warning zones or areas Environment Canada
uses for weather alerts, using the program's vector draw tools.   You then
save the outline objects on the vector layers into individual files and
convert them to ESRI ArcView format. 



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