Wx Infinity Forums

Starting Jan 10th, HGX radar is going "Dual Pol" as the upgrades continue across the nws radar sites.
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/com/weatherread ... _dual.html

I saw that posted on hgx earlier, but now it says "week of Jan 7th"

I hope it's working when the rains are here this week or there will be a lot of disappointed radar-gazing weather addicts (myself included)

They delayed it to Thursday.

http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php ... roduct=FTM

cool, thanks for that info

Will we, as NWS radar users, notice any difference in the radar after upgrade or is it an internal in-house NWS thing?

Dual pol takes out a lot of clutter and makes it much easier to determine what is being seen. It is both a hardware and software upgrade so I would expect to see some difference, though I don't know how much.

Some of the biggest uses of Dual Pol radar will be for severe, especially if you have an after market radar like GRlevel 2. It gives us a more detailed view of the sky as we no longer look at the sky in one dimension. It gives us a much more accurate and detailed view at the sky. For example last year a lot of the plains had dual pol already installed and looking at velocity was incredible. If there was a tornado it was well defined and you could more easily see the winds associated with it. You can also use it to distinguish amount of hail along with the differences between winter weather and rain. Overall a great upgrade and one that should last us a while until we get to phased array radars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX6LH_l3P3Y

This web page is very helpful, including an FAQ document and info for the radar techies among us:

http://www.wdtb.noaa.gov/courses/dualpo ... index.html

I think one of the neatest things dual pol can do is detect airborne tornado debris.

I'm guessing the upgrade didn't go too well. It was completed behind schedule, the first images I saw were full of clutter, and now the radar status message is this:

NOUS64 KHGX 230228 CCB
FTMHGX

MESSAGE DATE: JAN 23 2013 02:27

THE KHGX-88D WILL BE OUT OF SERVICE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

HGX