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Southern Region Public and Marine Services

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 Maritel  
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MARITEL is an exciting way to get marine observations into AWIPS from mariners. An office focal point speaks with a mariner about needing and wanting marine observations and then this is how the mariner can send in the information:
Basically, any mariner in a boat within ~40 miles of the coast:
  1. calls on their VHF radio,
  2. talks to an operator,
  3. answers some questions about: their boats call sign, where they are located, and the weather.
  4. Then the operator types in the message and sends it out. Then the observation is sent to AWIPS; it only takes a few minutes.
To view these observations, you can choose "moving maritime" on your D2D get the reports. If you look on D2D, the observation will plot with the Moving Maritime plots. It comes in the same avenue as Ship reports. Same for the text. To view the observation right click on your mouse and select "sampling". When you mouse over the D2D plot the observation will reveal it's self.

John Metz out of the Corpus Christi Office came up with a great idea! He created a sheet of the MARITEL instructions which he laminates and then hands out to the mariners. You will need Adobe Reader 4.0 to open it, but the sheet of instructions is located on the SRH webserver here:

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ftproot/msd/html/marineweatherreporttemplate.pdf

National Weather Service
Southern Region Headquarters
819 Taylor St. Room 10A46
Fort Worth, Texas 76102		 To: SRH Home | Public and Marine Home| CWWD Home Last Modified: August 1, 2001