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Technical Implementation Notice 12-13
National Weather Service Headquarters Washington DC
400 PM EDT Tue Mar 13 2012

To: Subscribers:
-Family of Services
-NOAA Weather Wire Service
-Emergency Managers Weather Information Network
-NOAAPORT
Other NWS partners and NWS employees

From: Richard J. Vogt
Director, WSR-88D Radar Operations Center

Subject: More Frequent Products from Select FAA Terminal Doppler
Weather Radars During Hazardous Weather Effective
April 12, 2012

Effective April 12, 2012, at approximately 1500 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the NWS will begin more frequent dissemination of radar products generated by the NWS Supplemental Product Generator (SPG) from select FAA Terminal Doppler Weather Radars (TDWR) during hazardous weather. These products will be provided via the NWS Radar Product Central Data Collection Dissemination Service (RPCCDS) and NOAAPort.

When certain thresholds of precipitation are met, the TDWR goes into hazardous weather mode, also known as Volume Coverage Pattern 80 (VCP 80). While the TDWR is in hazardous weather mode, the short-range lowest elevation scan is repeated every minute.
In addition, most of the other short-range elevation scans and volume products are repeated every 3 minutes.

Beginning April 12, 2012, the lowest elevation scan reflectivity and velocity products (Table 2) and other short-range products (Table 3) will be provided on the RPCCDS and NOAAPort every minute and every 3 minutes, respectively, from the 11 TDWRs listed in Table 1 below. Since the products (Table 2 and 3) are just more frequent issuances of currently available products, no new WMO Headers, AWIPS IDs or FTP directories are needed.

Table 1: Participating TDWR Sites

Associated WFO TDWR ID TDWR FAA SITE NAME
-------------- ------- ------------------
KFWD TDAL DALLAS LOVE FIELD (DAL)
KFWD TDFW DALLAS/FT. WORTH (DFW)
KGSP TCLT CHARLOTTE (CLT)
KILN TCMH COLUMBUS OH (CMH)
KILN TCVG COVINGTON (CVG)
KILN TDAY DAYTON (DAY)
KLOT TMDW CHICAGO MIDWAY (MDW)
KLOT TORD CHICAGO O'HARE (ORD)
KMKX TMKE MILWAUKEE (MKE)
KOKX TEWR NEWARK (EWR)
KOKX TJFK NEW YORK CITY (JFK)

Table 2: Two Example TDWR Products That Will be Repeated Every Minute in Hazardous Weather Mode (VCP 80)

WMO Header AWIPS ID Product ID Product Name
---------- -------- ---------- ------------
SDUS55 KFWD TR0DAL 181 REFLECTIVITY (Z) - BASE
ELEVATION
SDUS55 KFWD TV0DAL 182 VELOCITY (V) - BASE
ELEVATION

Table 3: Nine Example Products That Will be Repeated Every 3 Minutes in Hazardous Weather Mode (VCP 80)

WMO Header AWIPS ID Product ID Product Name
---------- -------- ---------- ------------
SDUS25 KFWD TR2DAL 181 REFLECTIVITY (Z) - THIRD
ELEVATION
SDUS75 KFWD TV2DAL 182 VELOCITY (V) - THIRD
ELEVATION
SDUS55 KFWD NCRDAL 37 COMPOSITE REFLECTIVITY
(CZ)
SDUS75 KFWD NETDAL 41 ECHO TOPS (ET)
SDUS55 KFWD NVLDAL 57 VERTICALLY INTEGRATED
LIQUID (VIL)
SDUS35 KFWD NSTDAL 58 STORM TRACKING
INFORMATION (STI)
SDUS65 KFWD NHIDAL 59 HAIL INDEX (HI)
SDUS65 KFWD NTVDAL 61 TORNADIC VORTEX
SIGNATURE (TVS)
SDUS35 KFWD NMDDAL 141 MESOCYCLONE (MD)

The three letter associated WFO ID and the last three letters of the TDWR ID will take the place of "FWD" in the WMO Header and "DAL" in the AWIPS ID, respectively, for actual products as needed.

Currently, the communications throughput for a single site ranges from 4 to 17 kilo-bits per second (kbps). This change will increase that by a factor of 2.5, which would raise the maximum loading to 42 kbps.

As with other centrally collected TDWR products, the additional products will be archived at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). The inventory of the archived products will be contained along with other TDWR products under the NEXRAD Level III tab
at:

http://hurricane.ncdc.noaa.gov/pls/plhas/has.dsselect

More information about how the NWS generates products from FAAs TDWR data can be found at:

http://www.roc.noaa.gov/spg/

If you have any questions about the technical content or generation of these products, please contact:

Michael Istok
NWS Office of Science and Technology
[email protected]
or
Tim Crum
WSR-88D Radar Operations Center
[email protected]

If you have questions about the NOAAPort activation of these products, please contact:

Brian Gockel
NWS Office of Science and Technology
[email protected]

National Technical Implementation Notices are online at:

http://www.weather.gov/os/notif.htm

$$
 
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