ARLINGTON -- Looking like a giant half of an egg dropping from the sky, the first piece of a $10 million network of faster, more precise weather radar was gently helicoptered into a new nest at UT Arlington on Sunday morning.
The safe landing atop Carlisle Hall drew cheers from scientists, meteorologists and emergency managers who say the radar will provide five minutes or more of critical early warning when tornadoes, flash floods, hailstorms or thunderstorms march across the Metroplex.The advanced radar makes once-a-minute scans of storms instead of the usual every five minutes. The big jump in data will allow National Weather Service forecasters to issue more pinpoint warnings for threats, said Mark Fox, warning coordination meteorologist in Fort Worth."Think of it as the difference between Little League baseball and the Texas Rangers. It's the same game, but one is played at a heck of a lot faster speed. That's a big jump," he said."Instead of saying Fort Worth is threatened by flash flooding, hopefully we will be able to bring that down to the Ridglea area of Fort Worth."Ten years in development, the near-ground radar system will supplement the current NEXRAD Doppler radar network."We've got a nice radar portrait now -- maybe it's a little fuzzy. This is going to provide some clarity to storms. It's almost like going from a 2-D to a 3-D look at a storm," said Tom Bradshaw, meteorologist-in-charge at the Fort Worth office.The radar also provides higher-resolution images and multiple overlapping views of storm cells, said Brenda Phillips, a co-leader of the project developed by the Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA).Officials expect to have four of the CASA radars deployed by the spring storm season, with units at the University of North Texas in Denton and in Fort Worth and Addison, each covering about a 25-mile radius.Four more are expected to be deployed next summer, and the full array will cover almost all of the Metroplex, Fox said.The CASA radar proved itself during a four-year test in rural southwestern Oklahoma, Phillips said."The data that they pulled in from Oklahoma, it's amazing. It's the difference between using a spy flashlight and a spotlight," Fox said.Funded by a National Science Foundation grant, the $40 million, 10-year project is made up of a consortium of nine universities, government agencies and industry partners. Engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have been leading its development since 2003.Dallas-Fort Worth's 6.5 million people and volatile weather mix made it an ideal urban test ground for CASA's next five-year study phase, Phillips said.The project also needed a strong partner like the North Central Texas Council of Governments that could coordinate its funding with local and federal government entities."It's a complicated process. It helps that the Council of Governments is really forward-thinking. We're hoping this is a model for regional deployments around the nation," Phillips said.It's also a sweet deal for the Metroplex, with CASA providing the $4 million cost of the initial eight radars. It would eventually require 16 to 20 radars to cover the 16-county footprint of the Council of Government, Phillips said.Each installation costs $35,000 to $45,000, and hosts provide power, Internet connections and maintenance. Local governments will be responsible for the first year's operating cost of $500,000, which is expected to be reduced in the second year, Phillips said.Exciting researchCASA will also afford a unique research opportunity for UTA's civil engineering department, said associate professor D.-J. Seo."This is where hydrology meets meteorology," he said. "We'll be the first community utilizing this data for flash-flood purposes in an urban environment. It's very exciting."Juan Ortiz, Fort Worth's emergency management coordinator, said CASA could save lives."It's great thing happening here today. It's not only going to help protect the citizens of Fort Worth, it's going to help the entire region," Ortiz said. "We'll be able to be more accurate about where the dangers are. Our goal is to get to block specific warnings."Steve Campbell, 817-390-7981Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
