Cell phone towers to be used in tornado detection?

[Glen Romine]

Glen,

Thanks for the insight.

BTW, what's the story behind your avatar? That's a nice tornado.

You're welcome, and I'm glad if you find it helpful. As for the avatar, that's from near Secor, IL on May 30th of this year. It develop an interesting kink near the end of its life - which I agree makes for a more interesting pic. It was a nice leisure chase, left ~ 2:30, home by 7:00 as everything had lined out by early evening. Family obligations (I'm a new dad) kept me from travelling down to the central plains for the May 29 action (though I nowcasted for my Dad and got him the S. KS cell that you and others enjoyed). Fortunately, the next day brought some action much closer to home.

Glen

 

[Jeff Snyder]

The current 88D network only provides new information data sets ~ every 6 minutes.

Glen

Just a minor correction here... The new VCP12 (Err, I think it's 12), newly released this year, allows for a much faster volume scan (~4 minutes compared to 6 minutes) and scans more layers near the surface, which allows better detection of the vertical extent of any rotation.

 

[Glen Romine]

The current 88D network only provides new information data sets ~ every 6 minutes.

Glen

Just a minor correction here... The new VCP12 (Err, I think it's 12), newly released this year, allows for a much faster volume scan (~4 minutes compared to 6 minutes) and scans more layers near the surface, which allows better detection of the vertical extent of any rotation.

Thanks Jeff. Forgot about the new VCP, so when the radar is in that VCP mode you get low level scan elevations at 0.5, 0.9, 1.3 and 1.8 whereas the old VCP 11 had scans at 0.5, 1.5, and 2.4 nearer the surface. So, the low-level resolution is indeed improved, though still not allowing radars to see any closer to the surface than before. The faster scan rates of 4 minutes though will still pale in comparison to the phased array systems in NETRAD, with volume collection on the order of 30 seconds.

Glen

 

[Geoff Boyle]

Thats not actually a bad idea. They'd be great for places with limited Doppler radar range, like northern British Columbia. The government or other organizations would probably be happy to fork out some money for a couple of those. Thats of course, pending if the ones tested in the US work out ok.