Golden Software Blog

Golden Software customers possess a broad assortment of backgrounds from earth sciences and engineering to education and politics. This vast background results in a variety of uses for Golden Software’s products. Each customer uses the software in a unique way, and we are pleased to share these stories. This blog features John McMurray, President of Commercial Weather Services, Inc., and his use of SURFER in the application of meteorology and hydrology.

In the arena of Geographical Information Systems (GIS), an application of Meteorology and Hydrology has been bridged. With more than 30 years experience each; meteorologist John McMurray and hydrologists Rod Carson have developed detailed spatial resolution of Doppler radar data. John McMurray, President of Commercial Weather Services, Inc. (CWS) has used Golden Software's programs, PLOTCALL and GRAPHER, as far back as the mid 90's in the development of Wind Roses. A 1964 graduate from the NY State Maritime College, Fort Schuyler, BS Meteorology, John spent the next five years in the US Air Force. Separating as a Captain, the next venture was as a Broadcast Television meteorologist and as a private consultant to date.

I hope you've enjoyed a closer look at some of the great new features Surfer 13 has to offer! To conclude the Surfer 13 new feature series, I want to mention just a few more new features that can help improve your workflows and increase your productivity!

New Welcome Dialog

Today's new feature series focuses on viewshed maps. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I've republished Leslie McWhirter's article from our newsletter published in July 2015 (Issue 79). Read on for an example of creating and using a viewshed map.

With the release of Surfer 13 comes an exciting new map type: viewshed maps. Viewshed maps show visibility of the surrounding map from a given point location. These maps have a wide range of uses in industries like security, architecture and landscape architecture, military, communications, surveying, wildlife research, and urban planning. Uses include site selection for buildings, radio/cell phone towers, or parking structures based on potential views or openness of the region, selection of survey locations, and discovery of holes in radar coverage. Read on for an example use case, and then contact us to see how viewshed maps can be integrated into your daily workflows and presentations.