The Cuban Weather Radar Network: current status and trends

The Cuban Institute of Meteorology operates a network of seven non-coherent weather radars. Four of them are Russian MRL-5 type, and the other three are Japanese RC-32B type. RC-32B were introduced in 1973, and MRL-5 in the late 80xs.

In 1997 the Laboratorio de Desarrollo Técnico began to reengineer all radars following an in-house integrated approach (common to both type of radars), which allows an evolving process in hardware and software development.

At the present time, five of the seven radars are modernized with full computer control and a three-level data processing system. Volume scans are transmitted to the National Center via dedicated telephone line. Images of some products are freely available on Internet.

The Cuban Radar Network has proven to be very useful for the observation of the atmosphere, especially for hurricane tracking.

In the extended abstract there will be given a more detailed description of the hardware and software solutions for data processing, archiving and dissemination.