Baron Services and L-3 Enterprise IT Solutions have installed the first of the U.S. National Weather Services’ 171 NEXRAD upgrades in Norman, OK. Weather data from the NEXRAD upgrades ultimately will be available to broadcasters among many others.
A culmination of the team’s 12-month design phase and the successful completion of the critical design review in October 2008, this prototype will serve as a test bed for hardware and software trials until May 2010.
The EITS/Baron team was awarded the five-year NEXRAD contract in October 2007 and is providing design, development and production of a systemwide upgrade of the 171 National Weather Service, Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Defense NEXRAD radars to dual-polarization.
Dual-polarization radars emit both vertically and horizontally polarized beams. Through use of hydrometeor classification for identifying locations and types of precipitation, dual-polarization radars deliver larger amounts of more accurate information concerning the size, shape, orientation and state of hydrological data.
