Noting the extreme weather recently in tornado country, Sen. Maria Cantwell updated media on progress at Washington State’s new coastal Doppler radar installation in Grays Harbor County.

“I’m pleased that after several years of fighting for our state’s first coastal Doppler radar, we’re getting to the point where the foundation has been laid and the system is being implemented for an on-time opening this September,” Cantwell said. “The Pacific Northwest will be safer because of this technology which will help close the weather coverage gap.”

As you know from your TV, Western Washington has one other other Doppler radar installation, on Camano Island, but the Olympic Mountains make a better door than a window, and are constantly getting in the way. The precision of Doppler allows forecasters to tell if you’re going to be rained, snowed, or hailed on.

UW meteorologist Cliff Mass adds that another reason “we need the radar is that the offshore buoys are rapidly destroyed by winter storms,” providing a map with red Xs marking the spot of dead buoys. Anticipating the amount of work out at the Langley Hill Radar site between now and September, Mass has created a new site to track the installation’s progress.

People have been agitating for a coastal radar system since the late ’90s, but “the radar bureaucracy in Oklahoma was cool to the idea because we don’t get many thunderstorms,” Mass told The Oregonian.

As it turned out, we waited long enough to skip a radar generation, and this new installation will be one of the few weather radars in the country to use dual polarization, allowing meteorologists to “see” vertically as well as horizontally. Getting a full picture of air masses means it’s easier to tell how much precipitation they’re carrying.