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Meteorological Products Processed At The NWSTG
(Routing Directory)

The main function of the National Weather Service Telecommunication Gateway (NWSTG) is to accept and distribute meteorological and hydrological data in the form of bulletins. Bulletins are individually identified by a WMO Abbreviated Heading , used to uniquely identify meteorological products for routing through the Global Telecommunication System and many other circuits, such as the Family of Services.

NWSTG Switching directory (Gateway Versions)

A switching directory of products is maintained at the NWS Gateway which identifies those bulletins for routing. This directory, excluding the routing information, is available. It contains WMO Abbreviated Headings recognized at the Gateway for switching to circuits during normal operations.

Switching Directory Product Description

Each line in the file has the format:

TTAAii CCCC CCCNNNXXX where:
  • TTAAii CCCC is the WMO heading (the ii portion of the heading may be zero, one, or two digits, but will always take up two characters, padded on the right with blanks [two numerical characters is the WMO standard]. The CCCC is a product source field with many special meanings (see The WMO Communication Header).

  • CCCNNNXXX is the AFOS PIL. This field is present only if the product is received from or sent to the NWS AFOS network. If present, the XXX portion of the PIL may be one, two, or three characters in length.
The file is sorted by the TTAAii CCCC field. The directory is available in three forms:
These files were last updated .

Line Specific Subsets of this Product Directory are available containing content-specific sets of data for selected data streams.

A complete description of the format and meaning of an Abbreviated Heading can be found in the WMO Manual On Global Telecommunication System, Volume I, No. 386.

A complete list of headings of bulletins exchanged on the GTS, as provided by the RTHs of the MTN, is available on the WMO Server in the Routeing Catalogues of Bulletins.

Gateway Switching Directory (WMO version)

The WMO has requested that the NWSTG maintain a WMO formatted version of the Washington RTH Routing Catalogue (switching directory for the Washington RTH; identifier KWBC) for exchange among RTHs and for operational monitoring use. The details of the WMO specifications for the GTS "Routing Catalogue" will soon (late 1998) be available in a new page change to the WMO Manual on the Global Telecommunication System, WMO-No. 386 Part II, paragraph 2.10.3.

The KWBC Routing Catalogue is available both here and on the WMO server as files for FTP retrieval. The files of each RTH are available from the WMO and are identified by using the RTH four-letter ID as a subdirectory name. The Washington RTH file kwbcrmks.xxx (where xxx = day and year of last update) is an ASCII character file and provides information about our Routing Catalogue (switching directory).

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Page last modified: November 04, 2004
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