NEXRAD radar holes

[Joe Nield]

Re: kirksville

Well, it's decided then!

Let's start lobbying Congress for a WSR-88D at Kirksville, Missouri.

I hope it is of better quality than the one that was patched together from surplus parts at Evansville, Indiana. That radar is next to useless.

 

[Joe Nield]

What about the Terminal Doppler Weather Radar network (FAA)? Many of those are located at airports where an 88D isn't close enough to detect low level wind shear.

Many TDWR radars are at sites covered by an 88D, but they employ a scan strategy that is significantly different and designed to detect low level shear near the runway complex. They are of higher resolution, but have poorer range than the 88Ds. There is an effort ongoing right now to get access to the data to WFOs in support of warning operations, especially with storms at close range, in part to help alleviate "cone of silence" sampling issues at nearly colocated sites like IND, since these radars scan at significantly higher angles than the 88D.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

How is the phased array program coming along these days? I remember a news segment about a year ago that discussed how this was (at the time) being tested in Oklahoma.

 

[Mike Smith]

Scott,

Please read the text of the bill. You will find the bill is all about focusing the NWS on its core mission. Of course it will not make more funds available, but it will stop the NWS from spending money on NDFD and other projects to serve specialized users. NDFD is the tail wagging the dog to the extent the NWS wants to spend more millions on the "nested office" concept (outlined elsewhere on Stormtrack) to make the NDFD better!

I don't know where you get the idea that private industry doesn't cover remote areas. I am aware of several that do, including mine, WeatherData, Inc. Indeed, on our home page ( www.weatherdata.com ) you will see a photo of a BNSF Railway locomotive in a very remote area. We cover 100% of their system.

There have been so many misconceptions about the private sector in this discussion, please let me refer you to an article I published in the "Bulletin" called "Five Myths of Commercial Meteorology." It is available on our web site at: http://weatherdata.com/services/news_5myths.php

Best wishes,
Mike

 

[Scott Olson]

Mike, I have read the bill. I don't see any reason for the NWS not to provide public forecasts to the public. Identfying hazardous weather situations requires constant anaylsis of weather data and there is no reason they shouldn't provide it. I don't view the public as a specialized user and I don't believe members of the public want to pay for weather forecasts. There is no great cost savings implied in this legislation unless Dr. Lautenbacher decides to remove jobs at WFO's. As has been pointed out in several articles this bill could do more than just remove simple forecasts from the NWS. S. 786 wasn't written with the intent of improving the NWS severe weather capabilties, rather was written as a gift to AccuWeather a contributor to Sen. Santorums PAC. It's not suprising that half the bill is just stating which the NWS has already been doing. I invite anyone who wants to read the bill and judge for themselves. I'll withhold any further comment on this legislation as to not get to far off topic.

S. 786
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.x...d?bill=s109-786

-Scott Olson.

 

[jaybarnsmith]

OK, here you go:

* Radar added at Kirksville, MO
* Radar added at Crockett, TX
* Radar added at Paris, TX
* Radar added at Clayton, NM (my suggestion)

Looks better. We could really use that Clayton radar today.


(click to enlarge)

BTW each range ring is exactly 10 nm; I didn't make that clear earlier.

Actually the KABX radar can cover the Mountain area rather well if you look at a tilt above .50 degrees. The money could really be put to better use covering one of the other holes that has a total lack of coverage in the west. I don't really think the holes in the plains should be a big concern either as most of these are rather tiny gaps when you compare them to some of the ones in the west. The three biggest gaps are in the four corners area and Oregon-Nevada border. These places should be first in line to get radars.

I also suspect that as new phased array radars come out that many of the gaps can be filled in by using the old radars from the sites that get upgraded ones. If they were to do this they could fill in all of the gaps.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

How is the phased array program coming along these days? I remember a news segment about a year ago that discussed how this was (at the time) being tested in Oklahoma.

Ryan,

The PAR (Phased Array Radar) is coming along as far as I know... Still probably nearly a decade away from completed testing/development.

Just a reminder... You can view Phased Array Radar imagery, as well as radar images from KOUN (the dual-pol NSSL radar) and the TDWR near northwestern Norman at http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/users/hondl/publi.../nwrtbase.shtml (and navigate the top menu for more images). Note that the PAR and other data on this site is not always updated in real-time! I've found that the PAR is down more often than not, but it's still cool to watch it when the website is updating new images.

The TDWR imagery is really cool, IMO, especially for low-level activity. There are some pretty cool radar images of things like outflow boundaries that the TDWR scans.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Hey, thanks Jeff -- I didn't know about that site. That's quite cool.

 

[Chris Geelhart]

Please read the text of the bill. You will find the bill is all about focusing the NWS on its core mission. Of course it will not make more funds available, but it will stop the NWS from spending money on NDFD and other projects to serve specialized users.

Specifically how much money is being spent per year on NDFD? It's not like the offices got an influx of new forecasters just to handle NDFD. Our office had 9 forecasters before NDFD became official, and it still has 9.

Chris G.

 

[Chris Geelhart]

Don't forget that VWX was cobbled together from spare parts and spent the first part of existence being a festering piece of.......well, yeah.

I was stunned to find out that VWX wasn't even officially commissioned until last December:

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/notification/ti...ad_comm_vwx.txt

As for the "spare parts" question, I recall press releases, etc. stating the radar was built by the Enterprise Electronics Corp. I remember reading the specs online; after searching awhile this evening, I think this was what I was looking at:

http://www.eecradar-idt.com/content.php?ca...odID=dwsr8501sk

It specifically says in there that this model was selected "to supplement the existing NEXRAD network."

Chris G.

 

[Mike Smith]

From what we can tell (NWS does not do a good job of breaking out budget items), the NWS has spent eight figures on NDFD, not mentioning the millions they have applied for to test "nested offices."

Agree the number of forecasters/meteorologists is the same. I would much rather have NWS meteorologists working to insure the integrity of the COOP network (see April "Bulletin"), manning the Tsunami Warning Center 24/7, and monitoring a radar network with the gap-fillers than trying to match contours for NDFD.