Where to find proper netCDF files and how to transform them into VDC files?

1

So I’ve been looking at this program recently and have been wanting to use it for weather (specifically tornado) simulation. I just don’t know where to find the proper netCDF-CF files and how to transform them into VDC files. Does someone know where to find the data for any kind of past tornado event?

2

Hi,

You can find some netCDF-CF files of a tornado simulation on our Sample Data page. Some instructions on how to make your data CF Compliant can also be found here. Once you have compliant files, you can convert them to VDC by following these docs.

The VDC is only necessary if you want to visualize the data at different levels of compression because it’s huge. If VAPOR is still responsive, I’d recommend just directly importing the NetCDF-CF files.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Scott

3

Hi,

Thanks for your response. I downloaded the tornado netCDF-CF files and tried to insert it into VAPOR. However, it keeps crashing everytime I insert the file. I have the most recent version of VAPOR. Maybe the file size is the issue?

4

Hmm. Which operating system and specific installer are you using?

5

I have Windows 11 and I used the Conda installer method. I’m not sure if using Conda was the best option, though.

6

We currently do not support our Python scripting API on Windows, but that’s a feature on our todo list.

Are you trying to use the GUI, our our scripting interface? If using the GUI, you can find our installers for Windows on our downloads page.

7

I used the installers for Windows and if I’m correct, the User interface pops open when I open Vapor.

8

I used the installers for Windows and if I’m correct, the User interface pops open when I open Vapor.

If so, you have the GUI application installed with our .exe installer. This can’t be done with Conda. Either way, I can’t reproduce this on Windows 10 or 11. Crashes are a big no-no for us and I’d like to see if I can get to the bottom of what’s causing this problem.

Can you confirm that you’ve installed VAPOR3-3.9.3-win64.exe, and provide the exact steps that are leading to the crash?

9

I can confirm that I installed the version you mentioned! When the GUI opens, I just insert the sample data from the Vapor sample data website (the one I downloaded was in NetCDF-CF format) via the open data option. After that the program crashes

10

Are you using File->Import->NetCDF-CF? There are several data formats that VAPOR supports, and there’s no generic “Open Data” option.

However I am getting errors thrown when I try to import the .nc file under the wrong data formats, such as VDC or WRF-ARW. I get errors when trying to import the uncompressed .zip file as well.

Can you think of any other details that might help me reproduce the crash? Thank you for reporting and helping with this.

11

Ah yes sorry I remembered it wrong, it was the Import option. For the rest I really don’t change much what I do. I simply import the file that I got from the sample data set and it crashes

12

Hi @Casper, myself and a colleague have tested our Windows 3.9.3 release installer with the sample tornado dataset on multiple Windows 10 and 11 machines and cannot reproduce this. This suggests that the problem may lie with your system, and I’d recommend that you try a different one if possible. If you’re able to, please let us know whether the problem persists. Thanks again.

-Scott