Radar Advancement

Introduction

Increased scientific understanding of tornadoes and technological advances have allowed the National Weather Service to dramatically improve tornado warning capabilities over the last 50 years. Arguably, no technological advance has had a more dramatic effect on issuing tornado warnings, than has radar. Here we explore the evolution of weather radar in Southeast Michigan from the earliest WSR-3 to today's WSR-88D Doppler radar.

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WSR-3 Radar

At the time of the Flint-Beecher tornado, there was no weather radar network in existence. The first weather radar in Southeast Michigan was a Weather Surveillance Radar (WSR)-3 radar, a surplus Navy 3 cm radar. This radar, installed at Metro Airport, was commissioned on May 15, 1957. An example of the resolution of the WSR-3 radar is shown in this picture.

A view of the hook echo associated with the Meriden, Kansas, tornado. Observed by the Topeka Weather Bureau WSR-3 radar. 1831 CST May 19, 1960.

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WSR-57 Radar

In 1959 the first "modern" radar, the WSR-57, was commissioned at the Miami hurricane forecast center. Over the next few years, this technology was installed across the country. Detroit received its WSR-57 on September 12, 1961. The WSR-57 offered some improvement over the WSR-3, but with coarse reflectivity and no velocity data available, the ability to forecast tornadoes was limited. The picture below shows the WSR-57 image of the tornado that struck West Bloomfield in Oakland County on March 20, 1976.

National Weather Service WSR-57 radar image from Detroit Metro Airport, March 20, 1976 at 7:15 pm -- just about touchdown of West Bloomfield tornado. This tornado was rated an F-4 making it the last violent tornado to strike Southeast Michigan.

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WSR-88D

The truly modern era in weather radar surveillance began in Detroit on June 19, 1993 when the WSR-88D began operations at the new NWS office serving Southeast Michigan from White Lake, Oakland County. The "D" in WSR-88D stands for Doppler. And it is the Doppler technology that has revolutionized weather forecasting over the last decade by allowing meteorologists to observe storm motion. As Dick Wagenmaker, Meteorologist-in-Charge at the White Lake NWS office observes, "The advent of Doppler radar allows meteorologists the ability to better detect tornadoes, especially the F4s and F5s like the West Bloomfield and Flint-Beecher tornadoes, than we could with earlier technology." The significant improvement in the WSR-88D's ability to isolate tornadic features in radar data from earlier radars is easily apparent in the image below. Here a Doppler velocity product from the NWS Northern Indiana WSR-88D captures the dramatic signature of a tornado over Van Wert County, Ohio.

Likely tornado indicated by NWS Northern Indiana Doppler radar 10 Nov 2002 320 pm over Van Wert, OH. The Doppler radar image shows strong in-bound (bright green) winds right next to strong outbound winds (bright red) -- a classic tornadic signature. The ability to detect rotation in storms is one of the key advances in radar capability that Doppler technology brings to the forecasting of tornadoes. (Flash animation loop - 1567 kb)