New Radar Can Detect Tornadoes Faster-

[ImTheWeasel]

From ABC World News:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=5253363&page=1

 

[RandyB]

"...forecasters would be able to issue warning with pinpoint accuracy up to two hours ahead of time where and when a tornado is likely to strike, according to Kloesel." -- I highly doubt that Dr. Kloesel said this. I think there was a bit of miscommunication here. Unfortunately, CASA won't be able to provide 2 hours lead time. Often times the parent thunderstorm responsible for a tornado doesn't even develop until just 45-60 minutes before the birth of the tornado. No doubt, CASA will make a huge difference for folks in rural areas where beam height issues do exist with the current network of WSR-88D's, as the article explained. One such area is south-central and southeast sections of the state of Missouri, near Poplar Bluff and Van Buren. This has long been a problem area for radar coverage, and happens to be in one of the most active areas of the country for severe weather.

 

[rdale]

It was a bit of a mis-quote... Using CASA combined with super-high resolution computer modeling, it's possible that maybe someday WAY in the future it can occur. In testing they did get one case where the computer predicted a computer two hours out, but that took 24 hours for the run to generate

 

[mdulrich]

In testing they did get one case where the computer predicted a computer two hours out, but that took 24 hours for the run to generate

Just curious, was it a PC or a Mac that it predicted? :

Mike

 

[RandyB]

Figured it had to be a misquote. Interesting though! I haven't been following the CASA project too closely.

mdulrich, I bet whatever it was ran linux.

 

[rdale]

Cases and additional info at http://socc.caps.ou.edu/ and realtime at http://wdssii.nssl.noaa.gov/web/wdss2/products/radar/casart.shtml