A new national asset for weather radar research is operational in Norman, Oklahoma. This project was developed as a result of a partnership between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, the United States Navy’s Office of Naval Research, Lockheed Martin Corporation, the University of Oklahoma’s Electrical Engineering Department and School of Meteorology, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, the Tri-Agencies' (Department of Commerce, Defense and Transportation) Radar Operations Center, the Federal Aviation Administration’s Technical Center and Basic Commerce and Industries, Inc.. This project involved converting a Navy SPY-1 phased array antenna system into a weather research tool. The National Weather Radar Testbed (NWRT) provides the first phased array radar available on a full-time basis to the meteorological research community.

The NWRT became operational in September 2003, but problems with the velocity channel delayed initial data collection until May 2004. Our initial efforts have been focused on ensuring that the data is of high quality. Qualitative comparisons with a WSR-88D (KTLX-Twin Lakes, OK) appear to be similar. In this paper, we will describe data quality improvements, recent upgrades, future plans and present some examples of the first tornadic data set obtained with this new national facility.