For several years, the National Weather Service (NWS) has been evaluating the feasibility of utilizing weather data from radar systems that are owned and operated by other federal agencies. The Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is a system that is optimized for hydro-meteorological surveillance and was selected as a candidate for inclusion into NWS operations. Several papers have been written on the engineering that was required to modify a Radar Product Generator (RPG) to handle non-NWS radar data streams. The result was the creation of the Supplemental Product Generator (SPG) which has been successfully deployed to 10 NWS Weather Forecast Offices (WFO). Data from the SPG flows seamlessly into the NWS operational workstation, the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS).

The initial deployment of the SPG provided only a handful of basic products. These included all of the base moments: reflectivity, velocity and spectrum width. Work on a second phase of the SPG has been completed (as of fall 2006). This ‘phase 2' system provides a much richer suite of base products including full resolution and longer range reflectivity products, user selectable composite reflectivity, velocity azimuth display (VAD) and the VAD wind profile. Engineering has begun on the ‘phase 3' SPG system which is envisioned to include numerous storm tracking and severe weather identification products as well as the full spectrum of hydrological products.

This paper will document and provide examples of the TDWR products that are included in the SPG phase 2 system and provide a first look into what is expected to be included in SPG phase 3.