03-17-2007, 04:55 AM
Quote:Explaining Doppler 2 Million
CBS 2's Enters A New Era In Weather Coverage
Image
Jeff Berardelli
Reporting
(CBS) NEW YORK What is "Live Doppler 2 Million"?
If you have been watching lately, you have no doubt seen us using our brand new, state of the art, weather radar. As a meteorologist I am excited knowing this radar will give me the ability to pinpoint severe weather much more precisely. So what makes this radar different from the others you see on television? There are three key reasons: it is "live", it is the most "powerful", and it has the best "resolution".
Live Radar:
You may not realize this but most radars you see on television are not live. Typically there's a delay of a minute to several minutes. In some cases the delay can be as large as 15 minutes. While this might not matter on a benign weather day, it is vital to have a live weather radar on severe weather days. Having "Live Doppler 2 Million" allows us to show severe weather like tornadoes, hail, and damaging wind instantaneously down to a specific street in a neighborhood. Other radars may be able to zoom down to a street but the data may be old! Radar that is not live is of little help in severe weather because severe weather hits in seconds, not minutes.
Unmatched Power:
Our weather department is very fortunate to have this Doppler radar. It is the most powerful weather radar on television in the whole nation! There are only a few others stations (most of them CBS) that own the same radar system. So essentially no TV station has a weather radar more powerful. Specifically our radar has 1 million watts of power. Most TV station radars have about 350K watts of power. The extra power we have allows us to see further. In fact we can pick up rain/snow as far away as Washington DC and Boston with out the aid of radars in those areas.
Pinpoint Resolution:
This is what really makes Live Doppler 2 Million the best. High resolution allows us to see small scale features inside of severe thunderstorms such as tornadoes, wind bursts, and hail. Many of us have become familiar with the term resolution with all of the high tech stuff we have in our homes now like computers and HD television. Resolution translates into clarity. Take for instance a tornado. In our part of the country tornadoes are very small... perhaps only the width of a large house or a building. In many instances, other radars just can not see the tornadoes. Why... because the resolution (pixels) is larger than the actual tornado. In other words the radar just does not see enough detail. Live Doppler 2 Million has much better "radar" resolution. I checked one against the other. It turns out that typical radars have a resolution about the size of an office park. Live Doppler 2 Million has a resolution about the size of a building in that office park. Seeing winds in a very small area is what it takes to detect tornadoes and wind bursts. Live Doppler 2 Million can do this better than any other radar out there.
Besides what is written above the radar has many other features as well. We can analyze winds at all levels of the atmosphere, plot waves over the ocean, snow/ rain lines, etc... Oh and one more thing... Where did we get the name from? Well it is 1 million watts of power and we are channel 2. You do the math.
If you have any more questions feel free to e-mail me.
Jeff Berardelli
Meteorologist CBS2
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_236180550.html">http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_236180550.html</a><!-- m -->