'This is where the weather happens'
The Norman Transcript
March 10, 2006
By Jennifer Griswold
Transcript Staff Writer
CHICKASHA -- As storm season fast approaches, a new system of radars was unveiled Thursday that will help local forecasters better predict and monitor Oklahoma's severe weather.
Celebrating the latest in weather technology, the Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) is testing a new breed of radars -- that will detect, track and predict severe storms, especially tornadoes -- in the state.
CASA is a National Science Foundation-funded partnership among 19 institutions, including lead institution the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the University of Oklahoma, Colorado State University and the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez,
The new radars will save lives and property, Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier, deputy director of CASA and professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, told a group of weather professionals from across the nation and media gathered at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma.
The Chickasha campus will be the home to one of four radars being placed in southwestern Oklahoma communities.
The DCAS -- Distributed Collaborative Adaptive Sensing -- radars also are hoisted atop towers in Rush Springs, Cyril and Lawton, giving a network of coverage to a weather-intensive region. The 7,000-square-kilometer area between Lawton and Chickasha averages four tornado warnings and 53 thunderstorm warnings per year, according to weather officials.
Described as a low-power, low-cost Doppler radar, DCAS are different from the NEXRAD radars currently being used. The four DCAS will work together using short-beam waves to observe the lowest level of the atmosphere where most storms form. NEXRAD is a long-range, high-power radar that observes the upper atmosphere and can’t detect storms at the lower regions, particularly tornadoes that reach the ground. When the two systems are used together, they will provide comprehensive coverage of the upper and lower atmosphere.
“The lower region of the atmosphere has been poorly observed in the past, and CASA is trying to change that,” Droegemeier said.
He hopes the new technology will reduce the number of false tornado warnings, which he said now stands at 75 percent.
“Currently three out of four tornado warnings are never verified,” Droegemeier said, “and this leads to public apathy and greater danger when tornadoes do strike.
“It’s obvious why we’re doing this in Oklahoma,” he said, “because this is where the weather happens. It’s where the rubber meets the road.”
The radars will send data to a control system on the OU campus in Norman. The in-depth information will be used by local emergency planners and weather forecasters.
Chickasha Emergency Manager Steve Chapman, who helped design the system, said the new technology would take the guesswork out of radar interpretation and allow local emergency managers to make knowledgeable decisions that will help save lives.
Researchers will be working on the system for the next six months to ensure the information being gathered is what officials need.
Oklahoma is one of three “test beds” for the new radar system that CASA officials hope will one day cover the state, then the nation. Houston and Puerto Rico also will have test beds.
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