Sports-like Coverage of Storms by Phased-array Radar

The unique electronic scanning capabilities of the National Weather Radar Testbed phased-array radar (NWRT PAR) are advancing rapid scanning techniques that improve the depiction of storm evolution and improve understanding of hazardous weather. Electronic rapid scanning techniques developed through 2011 include beam multiplexing, which improves update time by about a factor of two, and adaptive scanning, which improves efficiency by scanning only regions with weather signal. Rapid update data (~1 min) collected using these and other sampling techniques show improved depiction of significant storm evolution currently unobserved by operational radars. This improvement is shown for a variety of storm types, including tornadic supercells, microbursts, and hail-producing storms. Potential impacts of rapid update phased-array radar data on NWS warning decision making will also be discussed.