http://www.wgntv.com/news/wgntv-storm-chase-radar-hirsot-may12,0,2809160.story The critical work which will lead to work improvements in U.S. tornado warnings is underway in the heart of tornado alley on the University of Oklahoma campus inside the National Weather Center building, reports wgntv.com 'Dr. Pam Heinselman from the national severe storms lab just received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists for her work on phased array radar. "It is a doppler radar so we do get velocity info from it," she says. "But what is different is it scans storms electronically rather than mechanically. So mechanical standing radars they sit and spin around and collect data in that way. From an electronically scanning radar, you can focus the beam wherever you want." Instead of spending four or five minutes scanning the entire area around the radar, the new generation radars will focus only on precipitation and severe weather. There is hope that phased array can detect things like microbursts, which can be very deadly and destructive. Regardless of how well forecasts improve, we won't be able to predict a tornado hours in advance. Weather just doesn't work that way. But with supercomputers getting better and faster, there are hopes to eventually improve warning lead times to a half hour or more."
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