THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 20, 1994 TAG: 9411200044
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CAPE HATTERAS LENGTH: Long : 105 lines
All day and all night, two bone-tired U.S. meteorologists kept a patched-up, 45-year-old storm radar working flawlessly at the National Weather Service station near Cape Hatteras while Hurricane Gordon threatened the Outer Banks.
It was a stubborn last hurrah, but it showed that the doomed federal forecasting station at Buxton could still deal with dangerous storms.
``We've been locked on Gordon's eye since Thursday,'' James Ireland, a Weather Service forecaster at Hatteras, said Friday night. ``The only thing we don't see out there is the possibility of a day off.''
By Friday afternoon, Ireland and Meteorologist-In-Charge Wallace H. Demaurice, had stared without relief for 36 hours at Gordon's ghostly traces on their old WSR-57 radar.
``There isn't any relief; just us,'' said Ireland. ``We'll be here all night again, relaying our data. This radar can still reach out.''
But the winds of progress will topple the weather station on Hatteras Island, where Demaurice has acquired the stature of a demi-diety. His marine weather forecasts for years have governed the lives of Outer Banks residents, fishermen and vacationers.
The creaky Buxton Weather Service radar, developed during and after World War II, simply can't cut those distant storm clouds like modern radar. For years Demaurice has kept his WSR-57 working with electrical Band-Aids, including rare vacuum tubes imported - with difficulty - from Russia. In this country they don't make them like that anymore for old weather radars.
``It's hard to believe, but we've never lost this old radar when we needed it,'' said Demaurice. Through the years, he has personally reached out and touched dozens of mighty coastal storms with that Buxton WSR-57.
``We used it so much we managed to wear out the bearings of the antenna that rotates in the big white radome on top of our 100-foot tower,'' Demaurice recalled.
But the Buxton radar will soon be no more.
In a $2 billion modernization program, the National Weather Service has begun installing state-of-the-art storm-seekers called WSR-88-D (for Doppler) radar in a vast national network to greatly improve forecasting. The WSR-88-D's can track tornados as well as coastal storms.
Three of the WSR-88-Ds are already on line at Morehead City, Wilmington and Raleigh, and another one has been installed in Virginia between Norfolk and Richmond. The four super radars, plus two others in Dover, Del., and Washington will provide overlapping coverage of hurricanes that approach the mid-Atlantic coast.
Even though Cape Hatteras is conveniently in harms way for any storm that comes up with the Gulf Stream, Weather Service officials feel that the more powerful WSR-88-Ds at Morehead and Wilmington, working with the new radar at Wakefield, Va., will provide better hurricane coverage than did the Buxton station.
When the weather service is satisfied that those new posts are working properly, which is expected to be within two years, the Buxton station will close.
Demaurice last summer started moving much of the equipment at Buxton to the new WSR-88-D weather station at Newport, just outside of Morehead City. The ultimate end of the Hatteras Island weather station became painfully clear when most of Demaurice' highly skilled forecasters were also transferred to Morehead and other new WSR-88-D locations.
``Don't worry; Bonnie Terrizzi and her husband Frank are still sending those marine weather forecasts to the Cape Hatteras area,'' said Dan Bartholf, a forecaster at the new Morehead installation.
The Terrizzis - a rare husband-and-wife team of U.S. forecasters - were for years the familiar originators of daily marine weather broadcasts from Buxton.
But now, as part of the eventual elimination of people at the Buxton weather bureau, the broadcasts by red-headed Bonnie Terrizzi are relayed from Morehead for retransmission over the Hatteras Island marine radio band.
``Eventually we'll all be gone and weather information from Cape Hatteras will be automated and automatically sent to Newport or Raleigh or where ever it's needed,'' said Demaurice, 58.
He is ready to retire, too, but as long as the antenna for the old WSR-57 continues looking for trouble on the stormy seas off Cape Hatteras, Demaurice will be there studying the glowing patterns of wind and weather, winding up and howling far away.
When Gordon's movement became erratic Friday afternoon, Bartholf, the Morehead City weatherman, watched the brightly colored doppler radar display at the WSR-88-D installation and enthused over the sophistication of the new equipment.
``We can study the colors of different wind directions and we could clearly watch the storm begin to wobble in sort of a circle on Friday afternoon and finally head off to the west and then to the south,'' said Bartholf.
Demaurice could see it too, in glorious black and white, on his old WSR-57. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
DREW WILSON\staff
Bonnie Terrizzi issues a weather advisory for radio broadcast. She
and her husband, Frank, send marine weather forecasts for the Cape
Hatteras area from Morehead now. The Terrizzis - a rare
husband-and-wife team of forecasters - were for years the familiar
originators of daily marine weather broadcasts from Buxton.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Henrik Kruse of Westford, Vt., braves high winds and seas to take a
walk Friday in Fort Macon, N.C., while Hurricane Gordon blows in the
Atlantic. The weather station in Buxton has been tracking such
storms from the North Carolina coast for 45 years.
by CNB