Owing to the National Weather Service's (NWS) policy of not allowing WSR-88D radars to scan below +0.5 deg, shallow lake- effect snowstorms on Lake Ontario pose a serious detection and warning problem for the Buffalo NWS Weather Forecast Office. We use simulated scanning strategies to investigate how much detections would increase using lower elevation angles for the Montague (KTYX) and Buffalo (KBUF) WSR-88Ds.

The Montague radar is located east of Lake Ontario on top of the Tug Hill Plateau 520 m above the lake. Using the current scanning strategy, 2-km-deep snowstorms are detectable to a range of only 100 km from the radar (covering the eastern quarter of the lake). The Buffalo radar covers the western half of the lake. Consequently, lake-effect storms that affect communities along an appreciable portion of the shoreline go undetected.

Simulations show that, when the lowest elevation angle for KTYX is decreased to -0.3 deg, the range of detection of shallow snowstorms increases by 100 km. Lowering the lowest elevation angle for KBUF to +0.3 deg increases the range of coverage by 20 km. By lowering the scanning strategies for both of these radars, lake-effect storms would be detected over the entire lake and all communities affected by the storms would receive adequate warnings.