Is the wind profiler network changing?

[Jeff Duda]

I'm a big fan of the VWP network. I use it for chasing purposes and for obtaining upper air wind data between sounding times, and since there's one 10 miles from me (SLAI4 - the Slater, IA one), I can get really good data close to home. However, over the past 2 months or so, I've noticed a dropping off of available profiler network. The Slater profiler itself has gone "offline" or stopped sending data twice for extended periods (weeks or longer). Although it is now sending data again, I've noticed that time-height series for individual sites no longer seem to be available. I use the RAP page and the COD site to view profiler data, and both show the same thing: data is available on plan views, but no time-height data shows up. I know the McCook, NE profiler was taken down this year, but I've heard no official news of anything else.

Does anyone else know what's going on with the profiler network?

EDIT: Sure enough, as of 15Z today (so an hour and a half before I wrote this), profiler data is showing up again on time-height series (on the COD site only, though). However, there was still a several day period where none was available, so my question still stands. Perhaps I just need to start using other sites? What other sites provide profiler data?

 

[David Rundle]

Yeah, as a matter of fact, I'm painfully familiar with what's happening with Profiler. I was hired as a IT security contractor at NWS headquarters in Silver Spring, MD in 2008. Late last fall, Profile was shut off by executive order of the NWS CIO for failure to meet security compliance. Now, it was allowed to come back online after a few weeks, but with some stringent requirements...

Apparently, all IT security issues aside, the profiler, which is essentially a upward pointing Doppler radar, is utilizing the same frequency band as the EU's version of the GPS system.

So, there's IT security issues, some of which have still not been resolved to date, and the frequency issue, so there's new prototypes of Profiler v2 that have been requested. Between all that, it's amazing that anything still works.

 

[Mark Blue]

Hey Jeff,

I have this site bookmarked for profiler data:

http://www.profiler.noaa.gov/npn/profiler.jsp

The less I fiddle with the options in the left pane the better my results seem to be. Hopefully this will be useful for you.

Mark

 

[Jeff Duda]

I appreciate the reply, Mark, but someone (I think rdale) actually PMed me this site shortly after I posted. Thus, I've seen it. I do like messing with the LHS options because they allow me to view the data on this site in a similar way to how it's shown on the RAP site.