This question could probably be posted in several areas, but what I am writing is a google maps application and I'm also pulling feeds, so I'm choosing this as the main category to post this question in.
Basically, I've pulled a feed from NOAA which gives me weather alerts. I would like to plot these areas on google maps, however, the geolocation coordinates they supply are 6 digit numbers which took me a few hours to find out what it is. It's a FIPS code - the first digit is the county subdivision, the first three digits are the state, and the last 3 digits are the county itself.
I am trying to turn this FIPS code into latitude/longitude coordinates or a zip code or an address or anything. I can geocode virtually anything except a FIPS code. I've found some very limited documentation and functionality on converting something to a FIPS code, but not vice-versa, which is what I am looking to do.
I thought about just creating a large file or a table in a db that would store the county name/state/whatever with its respective FIPS code for lookup, but after realizing that there are probably at least 100,000 of these codes - it's really not a practical solution.
Is there any lookup service out there from something stable/trustworthy that I can use to convert a FIPS code into something I can geocode, or is there some other programmatic way this can be accomplished?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
