Bill Burton: It's time for us to take a look at the Science Behind the Forecast. As I'm joined by WAVE 3 meteorologist Tawana Andrew, Good morning, Tawana.
Tawana Andrew: Good morning. Today, we're talking about radar. Specifically, an upgrade to the radar that we have right now.
BB: Yeah, the radar we have now is very good, but this is an exciting possibility for an upgrade that could really make things a lot better for meteorologists. What do we need to know about this potential upgrade?
TA: So the multifunction phased array radar project, yes, that's the actual name.
BB: Rolls right off the tongue.
TA: Oh, it is so easy to say. So, this MPAR project aims to enhance weather observation capabilities using what's called a single phase array radar. And this, overall, has been shown to be great for aircraft tracking, wind profiling and overall weather surveillance. So these MPAR's, they have been used pretty often in the aerospace and defense industry, as I mentioned, they're great for tracking enemy aircraft, missiles, vessels, things along those lines. But we found out they're great for tracking heavy rain and tornadoes, too. So the key component of this whole project is the phase array radar initiative sensing experiment.
BB: That's a mouthful of letters and words.
TA: Meteorologists can't name anything right, we're not great at it. But this does focus on rapid scan capability. So right now, we have what's called as the next rad radar network. So this is the Doppler radar that we have in place, and this has been around since 1988. And Doppler radar systems are great because they allow meteorologists to track storms, attack, rotation within thunderstorms, and even measure how heavy precipitation is falling, but it still has its limitations. So the current weather radar that we have in the U.S., they mechanically rotate to scan the atmosphere. For the phase array radar, this is stationary, and it's comprised of flat panel antennae, and each element of this type of radar can transmit and receive signals, so that allows researchers to steer the radar beam electronically, not mechanically. And the reason that this is so great is because it allows us to have a lot more flexibility on focusing the radar. So we can focus the radar on just where the storms are. We don't have to scan clear skies in the opposite direction.
BB: Wow, that's revolutionary.
TA: Yeah, exactly. We can just focus on if there's one storm on just that storm, and this allows for faster scan times. So the conventional radar that we have, it takes about five to six minutes to complete a full scan. Within that time frame, you can have a tornado touch down, you can have straight line wind gusts. You can have hail fall, and by the time the scan is done, we've missed it, and we don't want that, because that's how people get into dangerous situations.
BB: No, we had that in Louisville just last year with the tornado in Parkland.
TA: Exactly. And since we have to wait all that time, this is where the PAR is so much better, because that rapid scan data happens once per minute. We get data once per minute, so that will cut down on that little bit of lag time seeing what's going on in the atmosphere. And this allows forecasters to better watch a storm as it evolves and its strength fluctuates over its life cycle, because those changes can happen within seconds and minutes, and we need those valuable seconds in minutes.
BB: Well, that's very exciting news, and we have a much better understanding now of what the next generation of radar could be thanks to this edition of Science Behind the Forecast with WAVE 3 meteorologist Tawana Andrew. Thanks for the knowledge, Tawana.
TA: Of course.
This transcript was edited for clarity.
