Improved Low-Level High-Resolution Wind and Tornado Detection from a Supplemental Weather Radar Network in the United States

Improving resilience in rural communities requires that structures be built to withstand damaging winds associated with microbursts, tornadoes, gust fronts, and other near-surface phenomena. However, setting appropriate building standards continues to be a challenge without the availability of high spatiotemporal resolution observations of winds at low altitudes. This is especially true for the study of short-lived events. Weather radars are a valuable tool and ideal sensor for volumetric measurements of winds associated with severe weather, and the nationwide WSR-88D weather radar network (NEXRAD) helps to generate useful wind data sets. However, the WSR-88D network cannot make observations close to the ground at long distances from the radar due to the earth's curvature and hence unable to sample the low-altitude structure of storms. Field campaigns using high resolution mobile radars are very helpful, but it is challenging to accurately position, deploy and operate mobile radars to obtain high quality data sets.

This presentation will cover several cases observed through a new supplemental high-resolution X-band weather radar network being established throughout the United States, highlighting accurate low-level wind information being captured. Additionally, several tornado cases will be presented highlighting the higher spatiotemporal resolution from the supplemental network, helping to corroborate the existence of tornadoes that might be too far from the national radar network to accurately confirm the presence of a surface-based funnel cloud. A brief introduction to the radar network and overall specifications of the radars themselves will also be presented.