Basic postprocessing question: not graphics

[MoreCowbell]

Hello,

First time post here.

I am interesting in seeing hourly records for a retrospective WRF run.

I am aware of these nice postprocessors:
ARWPost
NCL
RIP4
WRF Post Processing V3

However, I believe these are tailored to generating graphical displays of various parameters. I'm interested in seeing hourly records of the standard WRF output (e.g., wrfout_d01_2006-12-19_12:00:00).

Is this essentially an ASCII file or is it binary. If it's binary, what's the best tool to let me look inside and see its structure? Is there a way to convert it to ASCII? And is there a variable map for its contents?