Describe the Problem

While running plot_data_plane to test out some data for dtcenter/METplus#1551, I ran across some unexpected behavior. I suspect that there's an uninitialized time variable in the vx_data2d_nccf library.

Expected Behavior

When the valid time cannot be parsed from a CF-compliant gridded NetCDF file, it should be reported as unixtime 0, i.e. 19700101. However when I rerun the same plot_data_plane command several times, sometimes it's reported correctly as unixtime 0 and other times, I see a garbage value.

Environment

Describe your runtime environment:
1. Machine: Mac Laptop
2. OS: MacOS
3. Software version number(s): MET version 10.1.0

To Reproduce

Describe the steps to reproduce the behavior:
1. Download obs.txt.gz
obs.nc.gz
2. Run plot_data_plane multiple times with "-v 4" and watch the log messages

plot_data_plane obs.nc obs.ps 'name="precipitation"; level="(*,*)";' -title "Observation precipitation" -v 4

Here's good log output:

DEBUG 4: Data plane information:
DEBUG 4:    plane min: 0
DEBUG 4:    plane max: 2.10354
DEBUG 4:    valid time: 19700101_000000
DEBUG 4:    lead time: 000000
DEBUG 4:    init time: 19700101_000000
DEBUG 4:    accum time: 000000

And here's bad log output:

DEBUG 4: Data plane information:
DEBUG 4:    plane min: 0
DEBUG 4:    plane max: 2.10354
DEBUG 4:    valid time: -21924652902-03_082952
DEBUG 4:    lead time: 000000
DEBUG 4:    init time: -21924652902-03_082952
DEBUG 4:    accum time: 000000

Please inspect the library code and look for uninitialized time variables. Please initialize them to unixtime 0.

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