Brazos ARES Weather Monitor

Local help for online NWS monitoring, Winlink product import, tabular forecasts, raw products, and application updates.

Jump to:
Quick Start Installing on Windows Online Operation Winlink Import Supported Products Tabular Viewer Offline Operation Updates Troubleshooting

Quick Start

Start the application. It automatically retrieves supported NWS products when internet access is available.
Use the county buttons to move among Brazos, Burleson, Grimes, Madison, Washington, Robertson, and Leon.
Use View Full County Forecast for the complete parsed county forecast.
Use View Raw NWS Product when you need the authoritative source text exactly as received.
Use Open Tabular Forecast Viewer for supported SFT products.
When internet access is unavailable, use Import NWS Product with a supported product received through Winlink.

The monitor presents NWS products. It does not create forecasts, infer hazards, or replace operator judgment.

Installing on Windows

Browser and Windows security warnings are possible. Brazos ARES Weather Monitor is a community-developed Windows application. Because the installer may not yet have a commercial code-signing reputation, a browser, Windows SmartScreen, or Microsoft Defender may warn about or quarantine weather-monitor-setup.exe.

If your browser blocks or warns about the download

Confirm that you are downloading from the official Brazos ARES Weather Monitor page: https://data.brazosares.org/weather/.
Open your browser's Downloads list.
For weather-monitor-setup.exe, choose Keep or Keep anyway if offered. Exact wording varies by browser.

If Windows SmartScreen says “Windows protected your PC”

Confirm the installer came from the official Brazos ARES site.
Select More info.
Select Run anyway.

If Microsoft Defender quarantines the installer

Open Windows Security.
Open Virus & threat protection.
Open Protection history.
Review the detection associated with weather-monitor-setup.exe.
If you downloaded it from the official Brazos ARES site and intended to install it, use the available Restore or Allow on device action.

Do not disable Microsoft Defender or other endpoint protection to install the application. If the computer is managed by an employer, hospital, government agency, or other organization, security policy may prevent installation. In that case, contact the system administrator rather than bypassing the policy.

Online Operation

During normal operation the application retrieves the supported NWS Zone Forecast Product (ZFP) and State Forecast Table (SFT) products for the Houston/Galveston and Fort Worth forecast offices.

Automatic refresh

Select 15, 30, or 60 minutes. The default is 30 minutes. The countdown shows when the next automatic retrieval will occur.

Fetch Now

Forces an immediate retrieval and restarts the automatic-refresh countdown.

Report Issued is the NWS issuance time contained in the loaded product. Retrieved is when this application obtained or imported it. Those are different timestamps and should be interpreted separately.

If an online retrieval fails, the application retains the last good data and identifies the operating mode accordingly.

Importing NWS Products from Winlink

Important: Winlink Import is not a general-purpose weather-text reader. It is intended for Winlink Catalog Request returns containing supported NWS products, or the same specific supported NWS text products copied from another source.

Recommended Winlink workflow

In Winlink Express, request the appropriate supported NWS product using the Catalog Request function.
When the return message arrives, open the message.
Click inside the message and press Ctrl+A.
Press Ctrl+C.
In Brazos ARES Weather Monitor, choose Import NWS Product.
Paste the complete message with Ctrl+V.
Process/analyze the product and apply it to the dashboard.

Do not manually trim Winlink headers or footers. The application is designed to strip the Winlink wrapper and identify the NWS product inside it.

What can be pasted?

Either of the following is valid:

The complete returned Winlink message produced by a Catalog Request for a supported NWS product.
The raw text of one of the supported NWS products listed below.

If the text does not contain a recognized supported product, the application should reject it rather than guess what it means.

Supported Products

Product	Office	Use
`ZFPHGX`	Houston/Galveston (HGX)	County zone forecasts for Brazos, Burleson, Grimes, Madison, Washington
`ZFPFWD`	Fort Worth (FWD)	County zone forecasts for Robertson and Leon
`SFTHGX`	Houston/Galveston (HGX)	Tabular state forecast
`SFTFWD`	Fort Worth (FWD)	Tabular state forecast

The SFT parser is product-family based, but online retrieval is limited to the explicitly configured HGX and FWD products above. Unsupported or malformed products are not interpreted.

Tabular Forecast Viewer

The tabular viewer works with SFT products received either online or through Winlink import. The viewer displays the NWS-provided location, forecast condition, temperature values, and probability-of-precipitation values by forecast day.

The tabular viewer is a separate product view. It does not replace the county ZFP display.

Offline Operation

The application remains useful without normal internet access. Previously retrieved data remains available, local weather icons remain available, and the local help file remains available.

For new forecast data while offline, retrieve the supported NWS product through Winlink and use the import workflow above.

Raw NWS text

When there is any doubt about a parsed display, use View Raw NWS Product. The raw source text is the authoritative product loaded by the application.

Help and Application Updates

Help updates

This help file is bundled with the application so it works offline. When internet access is available, the application checks the hosted Brazos ARES copy and caches the newest help content locally. Updating help therefore does not require rebuilding or reinstalling the application.

Application updates

The application checks version.txt on the Brazos ARES weather site. If a newer application version is available, the operator is told that the application will close and is offered a button to open the Brazos ARES Weather Monitor download page. The operator then downloads and runs the latest installer manually. Updates are never installed automatically.

You can also use About → Check for Updates at any time.

During an activation or deployment, choosing Later leaves the current installation untouched.

Troubleshooting

No county data after Fetch Now

Check the Mode field. If the online retrieval failed, the app may be showing last-good data. Use Raw NWS Product to confirm what is loaded.

Winlink paste is rejected

Confirm that the returned message contains one of the supported product codes listed above. Paste the entire returned message rather than only a selected paragraph.

Tabular viewer has no data

An SFT product must have been retrieved online or imported from Winlink. ZFP products populate county forecasts; they do not populate the SFT table.

Help opens but looks old

The bundled copy is always available. When the app next has internet access, it attempts to refresh the cached help file from the Brazos ARES weather site.

Installer download is blocked or quarantined

Use the Installing on Windows section above. Confirm the file came from the official Brazos ARES Weather Monitor page before choosing any browser or Windows override. Do not disable security software.

Update check fails

The running version remains usable. Update checking is an internet enhancement and is not required for local weather-monitor operation.

Operational Principle

When the formatted display and the raw NWS product appear inconsistent, trust the raw NWS product and report the parsing issue. The application is intentionally designed to fail closed rather than invent unsupported weather information.

Help content is maintained separately from application releases and may be updated without reinstalling the program.