U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) is the main reason that Washington (the state) has a new coastal Doppler weather radar station, and a year ahead of schedule at that, so she took pride of place at the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Langley Hill in Grays Harbor on Thursday.
Cantwell managed to geese an unneeded Air Force NEXRAD radar from Keesler Air Force Base, which meant we didn’t have to wait for a new radar to be built, and shaved nearly $3 million from the projected cost, to boot.
Washingtonians now enjoy the first fully operational Doppler radar in the nation (yes, yes) with dual polarization. What, you may ask, makes us so special? We’re not exactly Hurricane Alley.
Then let’s get you in a plane and send you out into the teeth of a Pacific storm, suggests University of Washington meteorologist Cliff Mass:
During the ’90s we had a field experiment called COAST in which we flew the NOAA P3 Hurricane Hunter aircraft into a Pacific front. The scientists wanted to go out and cross one of the cores to see what it was like. The NOAA P3 pilots agreed…they had been through many hurricanes, so they were not concerned. Well, the passage through the core was very, very intense–with several g’s up and down and even the coffee pot broke off in the rear of the aircraft. Several scientist thought they were going to die. The pilots were shaken…no more flights through cores at low levels–this was a lot worse than going through hurricane eyewalls!
“For years we’ve worked tirelessly to strengthen our detection of coastal storms blocked from our view by the Olympic Mountains,” said Cantwell. “Long before the December 2007 winter storm devastated Western Washington, we knew this gaping blind spot left our communities vulnerable. Too often in the past, our weather radar coverage gap left forecasters without the complete data set necessary to prepare Pacific Northwest communities for big storms.”
In 2007 and again in 2009, large storms flooded the Centralia-Chehalis basin, closing I-5 and disrupting not just commutes, but freight lines. Major costs mount up by the hour when an interstate is closed. In December 2006, Madison Valley resident Kate Fleming drowned in her home’s basement during a flash flood, and the city’s efforts to mitigate flooding in the area continue to this day.
As most weather nerds know, Seattle’s Doppler radar is stationed on Camano Island, where the radar’s “view” is blocked in part by the Olympic Mountains. The new coastal radar has already proven its worth in solving that field-of-view problem. Currently, the Camana Island radar is shut down while it, too, is upgraded with dual polarization skills (it should resume scanning the skies by October 9, 2011). Even Spokane’s radar is getting the dual polarization treatment.
It’s all been a long time coming. “The Langley Hill Radar is the first addition to the nation’s weather radar network since the 1990s,” noted Jack Hayes, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Weather Service.
The National Weather Service is spending the $3 million saved on the radar installation itself on creating new dual polarization algorithms, software that can handle all the new data gathered by being able to look up and down, not just sideways across a thin band. I don’t need to tell you how exciting the new local TV weather graphics are going to be.
