The Gateway servers are available for the extraction of files by using standard e-mail. This can be useful by meteorological research groups and general users interested in obtaining the data without having immediate access to the Internet. The various files that can be obtained include site observations, facsimile charts, or meteorological forecast products. The current e-mail address is ftpmail@weather.noaa.gov.

You must first establish a list of desired products. You can best do this by accessing the server named below using your favorite web browser and a connection to the Internet through your Internet service provider. You will display and can record the file names of the data and products you will need for the future building of your FTPmail request. There are two subdirectories with specific data types available :

• http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data - for data and forecast products (in ACSII readable format),
  and
• http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/fax/ - for facsimile charts (in "TIFF" & "gif" format).

if you have remote access to standard E-mail while onboard ships at sea, this is a way to get marine fascimile charts and off shore text forecasts. Additional details on using FTPmail discusses the data types available and their related input format structure.