How to generate a state mask file from its border shapefile

[BinbinZhou-NOAA]

Our AR (Atmospheric River) Project would like to verify AR-AFS model over 3 west coast states (CA, OR and WA). We have the shape files of these 3 states (state border data). How to create the mask files for these 3 states from their shapefiles? @AndrewBenjamin-NOAA @AliciaBentley-NOAA @BinbinZhou-NOAA

Binbin
EMC/NCEP

[JohnHalleyGotway]

@BinbinZhou-NOAA please see this response about using the MET Gen-Vx-Mask tool to define a shapefile mask for multiple states on the METplus Discussion forum:
dtcenter/METplus#3186