Hi,

Firstly, this looks like a nice program for animating the free GRIB data from NOAA.

I've managed to download some data through this website (like many I've not been able to successfully through the browser despite supposedly having proxy settings that allow me through firefalls...) and noticed that there weren't any rainfall predictions.  Don't the files downloaded through the site contain rainfall data and if not why not?  The software seems capable of displaying the rainfall forecasts quite nicely.

Secondly, are there any forecasting products in GRIB format you can download directly from NOAA servers that have the 0.5deg 180 hour forecasts in one file and if so where can I get those?  I've been trying to negotiate the NOAA servers and it appears (correct me if I'm wrong) that the GFS forecasts are released as 60 separate files that contain conditions for each 3-hr timestep for 180 hours.  Is there anywhere you can essentially obtain the complete GFS forecasts with all variables in one file in GRIB format or is the GRIB format not capable of that?  If not, then does anyone know where you can get the GFS 180 hour forecast in a NetCDF format.  From my initial searching, I'm fairly sure the Air Resources Laboratory processes GFS data into single file forecasts but that it's in an ARL format not GRIB...Is this your understanding?

These forecasting data are certainly great to have freely available for anyone from the meteorological enthusiast to researcher but trying to navigate all the GFS/GDAS products is pretty confusing.  There doesn't seem to be an "idiots" guide to the free met data anywhere and all my research into GFS/GDAS just leads me to highly technical specification documents...I actually stumbled upon the GRIB.US website through Wikipedia of all places!

Oh, and I've seen this request in this forum but no one has responded so I'm keen to know if there are any other met forums dedicated to data products that is sympathetic to beginners!