As I expected, there's really no truly satisfactory solution given the re- striction by netCDF to one "unlimited" axis. According the Unidata's website, netCDF-4 may have this limitation removed. -- Gary Strand Climate Change Research Section, NCAR (303) 497-1336 strandwg@ucar.edu http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/strandwg