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Using SkyAlert for Tropical Coverage

SkyAlert customers may find a little known feature particularly useful for generating customized crawl messages for tropical activity. SkyAlert has the ability to generate a crawl from a text message that you can create using the simple text editor on the SGI-based SkyAlert system. This feature allows you to construct a SkyAlert scene with a crawl message containing your own commentary about any significant tropical events (e.g. a storm’s lat/long position, distance from key locations, maximum wind speeds, etc.)

How to Use the “Crawl From File” Feature on SkyAlert

  1. On the SkyAlert system, from the SGI desktop menu, choose Find, then Icon Catalog, then Applications.

  2. Double-click on the “jot” application (jot is simple text editor for SGI).

  3. Once jot starts, type the text of your crawl message.

  4. Choose File, Save, and navigate to the /wxdisk/SkyAlert/data/file_watcher directory

  5. Give the file an appropriate name. Be sure to avoid spaces and other prohibited characters, such as the “/” symbol.

  6. Enter the SkyAlert application

  7. Locate a scene that contains a crawl object and other scene objects that is similar to what you want for your customized Crawl From Text scene, and open that scene (or simply start a new SkyAlert scene).

  8. Use the “File, Save Scene As…” menu pick to save the scene under a different name of your choosing.

  9. Click on the crawl object within the scene to highlight it.

  10. From the Tools menu, click Editors, then Crawl Text

  11. When the Crawl Text interface opens, for the “Crawl Contents”, select the middle radio button for “Text from File”

  12. In the “Text from File” area, click on the Select button, and choose the file you named in step 5 above, then click OK.

  13. With the crawl text still highlighted, from the Tools menu, choose Editors, then Association

  14. At the top of the Associations window is a pull-down menu button. Click this button, and choose “Always On Even Without” (this tells the system to use the manual text file even though there will not be an associated triggering bulletin for this file).

  15. If necessary, repeat the above step for all other objects in the scene (you can choose additional objects from the list on the left while in the Associations interface)

  16. Make any other desired adjustments to the scene as appropriate. For example, you could add a WeatherPro snapshot of the storm’s track as generated automatically from a Hurricane Tracker product within a Show Element Builder (SEB).

  17. Now, put SkyAlert into Monitor Mode, and start the crawl. Each time the system is made to run the crawl, it will open the latest version of the file you manually edited as indicated above, and it will use whatever text is found there (even if that text has changed). Note: You can simply leave the “jot” program open on the SkyAlert’s desktop, and simply save the file each time you modify it.

  18. After you are finished using the Crawl from Text feature, be sure to put your SkyAlert back in “normal” mode by opening whatever SkyAlert scene you normally run.