Fort Rucker Radar Will Be Offline Next Week for Upgrade

The Fort Rucker Doppler Radar will be down for approximately four days beginning Monday February 6, 2017 for technicians to install an important technological upgrade. For folks in Southeast Alabama around the radar site, this basically means they will need to rely on KMXX (Maxwell AFB) or KEVX (Eglin AFB). If severe weather is not anticipated in this time frame and the upgrade proceeds as scheduled, coverage from these two radars should be sufficient for any other weather events that might occur.

A crew will install a new signal processor, which replaces obsolete technology, improves processing speed and data quality, provides added functionality, and supports IT security.

This is the first of four major upgrades, known as service life extension projects, planned in the next four years to replace and refurbish major components of the 20 year old WSR-88Ds and to keep the radars operational into the 2030s. The $150M investment is being made by the three organizations that use these radars, NOAA’s National Weather Service, United States Air Force and Federal Aviation Administration. The other service life extension projects include refurbishing the transmitter, pedestal, and equipment shelters.

The tri-agency Radar Operations Center, which supports the radars, estimates it will take about 10 months to upgrade the signal processor on all 159 operational WSR-88Ds.

A tentative deployment schedule is available here.  

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