Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 14:06:27 -0800 (PST)

To: csac-utah@csac.org

Subject: Multiple Bulletins


There have been multiple copies of the bulletin going to this list lately.
Here is an explanation of this problem and what we can and can't do about
it.

The bulletins are from the Utah Avalanche Forecast Center in Salt Lake
which part of the Forest Service. Unlike many other centers in the US this
center will not submit a single bulletin directly to our list and we
retrieve the information via the internet. If the bulletin has changed it
gets mailed.

They have been making small edits to the bulletin after issueing it.
Checking two of todays copies (with a unix "diff" command) shows that they
corrected "measly" to "measley" and "surface whore" to "surface hoar".
Since the bulletin was changed it was resent.

Unfortunately we have no good way to automate any decision of whether a
change was significant or not. With conditions changing right now it is
preferable to assume that any changed bulletin may reflect a change in
conditions.

The alternative is to have our script mail the bulletin to us and then
forward it. We do this at times. This requires us to monitor the e-mail
closely which we can do at times but not always. A somewhat longer delay
in getting the information to the list results from this approach as well,
so we are more likely to do this when conditions are not likely to change
rapidly.

Right now we have changed the utah list so that mailings come to us and we
will forward them to the list. We will probably do this on and off over at
least the next few days depending on our schedule and monitoring ability.
In the past this problem has been sporadic and has occurred for a while
then diminished again. Hopefully this will be the case. Meanwhile we will
do our best to provide the most timely information with a minimum of
duplicate bulletins, but there will be some.

Thanks for your understanding.

--
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      Cyberspace Snow and Avalanche Center (CSAC)
      131 NW 4th St Suite 397, Corvallis OR 97330
     #343 - 3495 Cambie St, Vancouver BC  V5Z 4R3
          (877) 457-0913  (530) 509-7840 Fax

       http://www.csac.org        snow@csac.org

              Jim Frankenfield; Director
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