Huntsville Radar Will Be Down For Upgrades Starting July 17th

The National Weather Service radar that is located in Hytop and serves the northeastern parts of Alabama will go out of service starting on July 17 for extension of life upgrades. Here is the official Public Information Statement from the NWS Huntsville…

Public Information Statement
National Weather Service Huntsville AL
1:10 PM CDT Wed Jul 12, 2017

…KHTX 88D Radar Outage Beginning July 17th for Upgrade…

The NWS 88D Doppler weather radar located in Hytop, Alabama will be down for up to two weeks beginning on the morning of Monday, July 17th for technicians to install an important technological upgrade.

During the outage, radar coverage is available from nearby radar sites, including the DOD radar at Columbus AFB and NWS radars for our forecast offices at Nashville, TN, and Birmingham, AL.

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 five 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, the NOAA 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 that it will take about 10 months in 2016/2017 to upgrade the signal processor on all 159 operational WSR-88Ds.

Category: Alabama's Weather, ALL POSTS