Running FMDA in the WRFx system

Install Anaconda distribution

Download and install the Python 3 conda distribution for your platform. We recommend an installation into the users' home directory. For example,

wget https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh
chmod +x Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh
./Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh

The installation may instruct you to exit and log in again.

On a shared system, you may have a system-wide Python distribution with conda already installed, perhaps as a module, try module avail.

Install necessary packages

The currently preferred process is to have conda find the versions for you:

conda create -n wrfx python=3.12
conda install -c conda-forge gdal
conda install -c conda-forge netcdf4 h5py pyhdf pygrib simplekml
conda install -c conda-forge f90nml lxml pytz pandas scipy
conda install -c conda-forge basemap paramiko dill psutil flask wgrib2
conda install -c conda-forge toml synopticpy==2024.9.0
pip install python-cmr shapely

On Linux x86-64, you can also use versions specified in a yml file:

 wget https://demo.openwfm.org/web/wrfx/wrfx.yml
 conda env create --name wrfx --file wrfx.yml

Note: The versions listed in the yml file may not be available on platforms other than Linux x86-64 (most common), or may just not work as package repositories evolve.

Set environment

Every time before using WRFx, make the packages available by

conda activate wrfx

Clone github repository

Clone wrfxpy repository

git clone https://github.com/openwfm/wrfxpy

Change to the directory where the wrfxpy repository has been created

cd wrfxpy

General configuration

An etc/conf.json file must be created with the keys discussed below. A template file etc/conf.json.initial is provided as a starting point.

cd wrfxpy
cp etc/conf.json.initial etc/conf.json

Configure the queuing system, system directories, WPS/WRF-SFIRE locations, and workspace locations by editing the following keys in etc/conf.json:

"sys_install_path": "/path/to/wrfxpy"
"wget" : "/path/to/wget"

Note that the rest of the paths are not used by FMDA, so you can leave defaults or remove them. To find the default wget,

which wget

Get static data

Acquire the elevation static data from here:

mkdir static
cd static
wget https://demo.openwfm.org/web/wrfx/hrrr_terrain.tbz
tar xvfj hrrr_terrain.tbz

Tokens configuration

When running wrfxpy, sometimes the data needs to be accessed and downloaded using a specific token created for the user. For instance, in the case of running the Fuel Moisture Model, one needs a token from a valid MesoWest user to download data automatically. All of these can be specified with the creation of the file etc/tokens.json from the template etc/tokens.json.initial containing:

{
  "mesowest" : "token-from-synopticdata.com"
}

So, if any of the previous capabilities are required, create a token from the specific page, do

cp etc/tokens.json.initial etc/tokens.json

and edit the file to include your previously created token.

For running the fuel moisture model, a new MesoWest user can be created in MesoWest New User. Then, the token can be acquired and replaced in the etc/tokens.json file. Also, the user can specify a list of tokens to use.

Synoptic Database configuration

For FMDA to acquire and store fuel moisture RAWS data, it uses an add-on that needs to be installed. These are the instructions to install it:

cd src/ingest
git clone https://github.com/wirc-sjsu/SynopticDB

FMDA cycler configuration

To specify configurations for the FMDA cycle, there is a JSON file in the etc folder called fmda_cycler.json. You can modify the file and create your own workspace path for FMDA output, lookback length for reanalysis applications, and regions to create FMDA products for.

Visualizations in the web

Configure the following keys in etc/conf.json

"shuttle_ssh_key": "/path/to/id_rsa"
"shuttle_remote_user": "user_id"
"shuttle_remote_host": "demo.openwfm.org"
"shuttle_remote_root": "/path/to/remote/storage/directory"
"shuttle_lock_path": "/tmp/short_user_id"

The "shuttle_remote_root" key is usually defined as "/home/user_id/wrfxweb/fdds/simulations". So, everything should be ready to send post-processing simulations to the visualization server.

Note: If visualizations for wrfxweb are not required, just remove all the remote options from the conf.json.

Running first example

To run a simple nowcast example, do:

conda activate wrfx
./hrrr_cycler a 42 -124.6 49 -116.4