def getRealtimeStations():
    """ Get a list of realtime stations available from CDIP's thredds catalog"""
    from lxml import etree
    from urllib.request import urlopen
    parser = etree.HTMLParser()
    with urlopen(
        'http://thredds.cdip.ucsd.edu/thredds/catalog/cdip/realtime/catalog.xml'
        ) as f:
        tree = etree.parse(f, parser)
    root = tree.getroot()
    stations = []
    for dataset in root.iterfind('.//dataset/dataset'):
        stations.append(dataset.get('name')[0:3])
    return stations
