
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, June 20, 1994                    TAG: 9406200018 
SECTION: LOCAL                     PAGE: B6    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 
DATELINE: 940620                                 LENGTH: WAKEFIELD

NEW DOPPLER WEATHER RADAR TO BRING EARLIER WARNINGS

{LEAD} Two minutes before a tornado killed three people at a Colonial Heights Wal-Mart last summer, the National Weather Service office in Richmond issued a tornado watch.

A new weather station with a $3 million Doppler radar that will open in August could have given warning of the storm much earlier, said Bill Sammler, the meteorologist setting up the Wakefield station.

{REST} ``That storm was doing damage to the southwest an hour before in places like Nottoway and Brunswick,'' but the old radar system couldn't detect it, Sammler said. ``The damage was pretty spotty, but the Doppler radar could pick up the velocity signature of the tornado.''

Improved computer software will display the radar's data in two dimensions - something Sammler said also could have helped the forecasters spot the tornado.

The Aug. 6 twister smashed through Petersburg's Old Town, causing heavy damage but no deaths, and then plowed through the Wal-Mart moments later.

``Ten or 15 minutes makes the difference between maybe one person being injured and 1,000 people being injured or killed,'' said George Foresman, operations director for the state Department of Emergency Services.

The Wakefield station is part of a $4.4 billion modernization program by the weather service that includes cutting back from 250 locations to 116 stations, each with Doppler radar.

Radar works by sending out a brief electronic pulse and listening for it to bounce back. The time it takes to come back tells the radar the distance to the object. Doppler radar can also measure minute differences in time between two returning radio pulses. The difference lets a computer calculate the direction and speed of an object.

The Wakefield station will replace weather-service offices in Richmond and Norfolk within three years and cover the area within about a 125-mile radius, including three counties in southern Maryland and nine northeastern North Carolina counties. The station will serve about 2.5 million people.

The weather service office in Sterling was one of the first stations to use the new technology more than two years ago. A third Virginia station will be built in Blacksburg and will replace weather-service facilities in Lynchburg and Roanoke.

The Wakefield radar was installed May 25 atop an 80-foot steel tower and will begin operating in late July, Sammler said. The radar dome is 30 feet in diameter and looks like a giant volleyball. It rises from a clearing along U.S. 460.

{KEYWORDS} WEATHER FORECASTING RADAR

by CNB