Bare bones tool for writing a UNC-RENCI Hydro-NEXRAD rainfall accumulation data file (in netCDF format) to CSV.

gistfile1.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
""" Bare bones tool for writing a UNC-RENCI Hydro-NEXRAD rainfall
    accumulation data file (in netCDF format) to CSV.  Writes output
    to standard out.

    @author brian_miles@unc.edu
    
    Requires Unidata's netcdf4 Python library: https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf4-python
"""
import os, sys

import netCDF4

sep = ','
variables = ['time','latitude','longitude','accumulation_mm']

if __name__ == '__main__':
    infile = sys.argv[1]
    nc = netCDF4.Dataset(infile, 'r')
    
    out = sys.stdout
    header = sep.join(variables)
    header = "{0}{1}".format(header, os.linesep)
    out.write(header)

    var_time = nc.variables['time']
    var_lat = nc.variables['latitude']
    lats = range(len(var_lat))
    var_lon = nc.variables['longitude']
    lons = range(len(var_lon))
    var_acc = nc.variables['accumulation']

    for (i, t) in enumerate(var_time):
        time_str = str(netCDF4.num2date(t, var_time.units))
        for lat_idx in lats:
            for lon_idx in lons:
                proto = "{t}{sep}{lat}{sep}{lon}{sep}{acc}{lnsep}"
                line = proto.format(sep=sep,
                                    t=time_str,
                                    lat=var_lat[lat_idx],
                                    lon=var_lon[lon_idx],
                                    acc=var_acc[i][lat_idx][lon_idx],
                                    lnsep=os.linesep)
                out.write(line)