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Severe Weather Awareness 2017

Scott Roberts by Scott Roberts
2017-03-03 05:13 CST
in Education
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This year’s Severe Weather Awareness Week for Kansas starts on Monday. Throughout the week I’ll be posting on a number of severe weather-related topics and linking back to some of our previous preparedness posts.

Today, we take a look at one of the keys to monitoring the weather in real-time…weather radar. The current generation of weather radar in the US is the WSR-88D. Here’s an infographic produced by the National Weather Service in Tulsa about the 88D (click to enlarge):

Infographic on the WSR-88D radar. Produced by NWS Tulsa
Infographic on the WSR-88D radar. Produced by NWS Tulsa.

I never gave a though to what the WSR meant. A nod to the wartime heritage of RADAR, the acronym that stands for RAdio Detection and Ranging.

During World War II, radar operators discovered that weather was causing echoes on their screen, masking potential enemy targets. Techniques were developed to filter them, but scientists began to study the phenomenon. Soon after the war, surplus radars were used to detect precipitation. (via Wikipedia)

The “hook echo” was first described in 1953 by Donald Stagg. The imagery in the early days was nothing to write home about:

Tornadic storms near Minneapolis-St Paul, May 06, 1965 (courtesy NOAA, public domain)

Nowadays, radar images such as this are the norm:

NEXRAD Level 2 radar image (Base Reflectivity), Moore, OK tornado May 20, 2013. Original image: https://stevehorstmeyer.blogspot.com/2013/05/moore-ok-may-20-2013-tornado-hook-echo.html

With Level 2 data and the proper software, it’s possible to watch a 3-D image of the storm with only a few minutes lag from real time:

3-D display of radar data from the May 3, 1999 Moore tornado. Image produced by Gibson Ridge Software, the maker of GRLevel2 Analyst, at https://www.grlevelx.com/gr2analyst_2/

Technology continues its march…and we reap the safety benefits.

Would you like to learn how to interpret the various radar products to position yourself to safely observe and report severe weather? It’s one of several topics I’ll be covering in Salina March 15th and 22nd in cooperation with the CLASS program at Salina Public Library. Here are the details…

 

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Scott Roberts

Scott Roberts

I've chased storms and reported on the weather in some form now for almost 40 years. My first severe weather coverage was in the summer of 1981 on an FM station in Pratt, KS. I worked for KFDI News, including many hours in the Mobile Units during storm season, for six years. I went to KWCH12 as their storm chase coordinator for the 2003 and 2004 seasons. Then I went into business for myself and have been chasing actively since 2005. 2020 brings some new things to the site, but at the core I still am driven to connect my understanding of weather and safety to you, giving accurate and timely information the best ways I can with the tools available. I'm gratified to have you along for the ride!

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