Gage Data File Format

The raingage data files should be sent automatically to a directory specified in IRIS Setup > Input for the input pipe.

The data can be sent by FTP, RCP, or NFS. The file should contain the hourly gage totals for all of the gages along with other supporting housekeeping information required by the GAGE product such as date and time and raingage location.

The input data file format is as follows:

• Each file is plain text ASCII, and the overall structure is a collection fields consisting of a keyword followed by one or more data values. This makes the format expandable, since new keywords can easily be added in the future, and each software reader can choose which set of keywords it needs to process.
• White space is used to separate the keywords and data values. Quotation marks may be used around a string value if there is a possibility that the string contains white space. Each line is terminated by a "newline" character.
• Each file represents data from any number of stations, but only one data time is reported in each file. That time is the ending time of the data, and is reported using the TIME and SPAN keywords in the first lines of the file. The fundamental time resolution is quantized to one-minute intervals.
• Each rain gage station report consists of a line containing at least the CODE and LONLAT keywords, plus either the RRATE or RFALL keyword. The QUAL and REM keywords are optional.

In general, the input pipe must be custom, written either by the customer or by Vaisala. This is the format used by the AsciiToGage input pipe. If you wish to use another format, you must write your own custom input pipe.

The keywords are as follows:

# any comment

Any line beginning with at "#" is ignored, as well as all blank lines.

TIME yyyymmddhhmm

The ending time for all of the stations reported in this file. The string of digits gives the year, month, day, hour, and minute. This keyword appears once at the beginning of the file.

SPAN nn

The time span in decimal minutes for all of the data reported in this file. This keyword appears once at the beginning of the file. IRIS supports 60 minute spans.

CODE nnnnnn

Station code for a rain gage. The code is an arbitrary string 15 or less characters long. This field must be present for each reported gage.

LONLAT nn.nnnnn nn.nnnnn

Longitude and latitude of a rain gage. Longitude is a real number from -180 ... +180, with positive values representing East longitude.

Latitude is a real number from -90 ... +90, with positive values representing North latitude. Any number of decimal digits of precision can be used. This field must be present for each reported gage.

RRATE nn.nnn

The rain rate in millimeters/hour for a raingage. Either the RRATE field or the RFALL field must be present for each reported gage.

RFALL nn.nnn

The rain fall amount in millimeters for a raingage. Either the RRATE field or the RFALL field must be present for each reported gage.

Z/R ccc.c e.ee

Optional field that is available from disdrometer type raingages capable of calculating a Z/R relationship. The numbers are the constant and exponent in the equation Z = CRE. When there is no rain, or the disdrometer is unable to make a measurement, the values of 0.0 are sent for both numbers. This is interpreted as a special flag to indicate that the default values should be used.

QUAL nn

The data quality (0:Useless, 10:Best) for a rain gage report. This field is optional. If it is omitted the data quality is assumed to be "10" (Best).

REM xxxxxxxxxxx

Allows a comment to be inserted in the file. An arbitrary text field follows. Use quotes around comments if the comment includes white space.

The following example shows rain gage data for 5 sites during a 60-minute time span ending at 22:00 on 10 July 2000. Note that the exact columns and the numerical precision may vary, as does the order of keywords on each line.

REM "Example format of an IRIS Rain Gage input file" TIME 200007102200 SPAN 60
CODE 001213 LONLAT 127.312533 38.172512 RRATE 4.5
CODE 000223 LONLAT 127.2223 38.2155 RRATE 2.2
CODE 000095 LONLAT 127.31 38.2283 RFALL 0.083
LONLAT 127.1214 38.1825 QUAL 0 RRATE 1.2 REM "Gage broken"
CODE 000122
CODE 000109 RRATE 1.1 LONLAT 127.2884 38.1277