On September 17, NBC’s StormTracker 4 team visited Cook Campus, the site of the Doppler radar tower with its 1,000,000 watts of cutting-edge technology.
IT’S GOT THE POWER!
StormTracker 4 is powered by one million watts of cutting-edge technology. It can generate 1,000 pulses within the blink of an eye. And it has a range of 50,000 square miles—about the size of Pennsylvania—which can fill in the gaps left by existing radar technology all over the tri-state area.
StormTracker 4 uses something called dual polarity, which means it has such a high resolution that it can track weather down to the street level. Other radars sweep the atmosphere, but StormTracker 4 can get down to the details from water droplets and approaching snow systems to smoke from brush fires and debris from a tornado.
“Imagine there is rain or snow falling in an area that extends 100 miles in all directions from the radar,” explains Anthony Broccoli. “You want the radar to be able to see the precipitation that’s 100 miles away, and not be blocked by precipitation that’s 20 miles away. That’s what this radar can do: it can see distant precipitation without being blocked by what’s occurring closer.” StormTracker 4 can also distinguish between snow and rain under the right circumstances, and it can fill in the gaps between the two nearest radars, which are located in eastern Long Island and southern New Jersey.
What this means for local residents is that their meteorologists now have access to some of the most advanced technology available and can tap into this detailed data in real time, allowing for advanced notice of weather threats and more time to prepare.
