New Radar in Oklahoma's weather future

The face of weather radar may be changing once again. And it comes in the form of something called the Phased Array Radar. <br><br>Early tests are promising. It uses multiple beams and frequencies to

Wednesday, December 5th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

The face of weather radar may be changing once again. And it comes in the form of something called the Phased Array Radar.

Early tests are promising. It uses multiple beams and frequencies to reduce the amount of scan time from six minutes for NEXRAD radar to one minute or less! That could cut warning times by as much as five minutes and that's just the beginning.

The director of the National Severe Storms labs, Dr Jeff Kimpel, made a stop in Tulsa and talked about the new radar and its importance to the future of forecasting. "We're taking military technology that's used for war fighting purposes and we're gonna take that and re-engineer it into meteorological applications to protect lives and property of people in the United States."

Researchers will test the radars on Navy ships. It's expected to take ten to fifteen years to deploy the radars throughout the US.