THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 9, 1996 TAG: 9606070234
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 136 lines
HISTORICALLY, by the time one of our spent hurricanes whirls across the Atlantic to England, it's usually so winded from the effort that neither Shakespeare nor King Lear knew precisely what to call the great storms.
King Lear tried, with a lot of help from his friend:
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples,
Drown'd the cocks!
That said, and with an active 1996 hurricanoe season predicted, it's comforting to know that never before has the National Weather Service been better equipped to handle wet roosters, rainy steeples, and even ye mighty hurricanoe.
From Tidewater to Miami, a string of interlinked digital weather radars now forms an early warning network far superior to any previous hurricane tracking system.
Cyberspace, as well as the Atlantic seacoast, have become the province of the all-seeing WSR-88-D Weather Service radars.
Painting with parti-colored pixels, the digital radars precisely display how much rain is gushing down a hurricane's mighty central funnel, how fast the circling winds are steering the eye toward an Outer Banks landfall and whether any cataracts - strong floods or deluges - are threatening Oregon Inlet fishermen.
``The WSR-88-D doppler radars can tell us where and when coastal evacuation should be carried out,'' said Thomas E. Kriehn, meteorologist in charge of the new weather station at Newport, N.C., on U.S. 70 northwest of Morehead City.
``With an 88-D, we can also `see' a tornado and issue warnings right down to the exact country crossroads where a tornado may be on the ground and looking for trouble,'' Kriehn said.
The most noticeable benefits of Kriehn's new radar will be in the quality of forecasts that are now being issued.
The Newport weather station covers the North Carolina coast from above Albemarle Sound down to Wilmington and no less than 125 miles out to sea.
Only a few days ago, William M. Gray, the Colorado State University hurricane expert, in an annual forecast to coincide with the June 1 opening of the hurricane season, predicted that seven hurricanes will be spawned this summer from 11 tropical storms.
Two of the hurricanes will be ``major storms'' - real steeple drenchers - Gray predicted.
That would be a somewhat grimmer outlook than usual, Gray warned, particularly after last year's ``active'' Atlantic storm season.
``It's unusual to have an above-average year in terms of hurricane activity following a year like 1995 that was one of the most active on record,'' Gray said.
``Usually in a year that follows one of these very active seasons, we see less than average hurricane activity.''
But while Gray's long-range forecasts have, in the past, been surprisingly accurate, the more impressive news this year involves the National Weather Service stations now linked in the new predictive network up and down the Coast.
All the new stations with WSR-88-D doppler radars can ``dial up'' radar pictures from another linked system to paint a vividly meaningful picture that allows local, state and federal emergency services to get going early with safety measures.
Satellite overviews of cloud cover and storm formations also can be combined to give forecasters the tools to draw real-time weather maps.
The newly interwoven radar net now protecting the Outer Banks and nearly all of North Carolina east of I-95 begins with a WSR-88-D at Miami's National Hurricane Center.
Similar super radars are on line at Melbourne, Fla., near NASA's rocket launching complex at Cape Kennedy; at Jacksonville; at Charleston; at Savannah; at Wilmington, N.C.; and at Kriehn's Newport weather facility.
Also in the net is the Raleigh weather bureau, Army and Navy facilities in North Carolina and the Hampton Roads WSR-88-D installation at Wakefield, Va., west of Norfolk.
All the weather information gathered at any one of the Atlantic Coast stations is constantly moved into the WSR-88-D computer files at other stations in the East Coast net. Much of the information is automatically gathered and sent out to marine and aviation interests.
But even greater magic is still to come when all the new stations in the Weather Service's $4.4 billion modernization program are completed by the end of this century.
Ultimately, 800 WSR-88-D's - each costing $1 million - will download incoming information into meteorological supercomputers at the Washington headquarters of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
NOAA, a function of the U.S. Commerce Department, runs the National Weather Service.
Another key link is at the National Severe Storms station in Norman, Okla., where tornados are the catch of the day.
``With doppler weather radar, Dorothy wouldn't have any trouble keeping track of Toto,'' said a severe storm meteorologist.
Tornadoes in the nation's midsection deserve the overworked adage about hurricanes starting with the tiny breeze from a butterfly's wing in faraway China.
Weather forecasters long ago agreed with John Donne - when a storm bell tolls, it tolls for every meteorologist who dares to second-guess the inevitable violence of climate.
Those distant thunderstorms that stir up tornadoes march with windy regularity eastward to the Atlantic coast where, if the timing is right, they can also shove a hurricane away from a U.S. landfall and eastward to the isles of mad old Lear.
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!
You hurricanoes and cataracts. . .
Yonder, please. ILLUSTRATION: [Cover, Color photo]
EARLY WARNING
Photo courtesy of the NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
Michael Pereira, 44, of Newport, a weather service electronic
systems analyst, explains the use of the digital radar that he uses
to track storms.
Staff photos by DREW C. WILSON
Meteorologist Cory Gates, 34, of Newport ponders the midday coastal
forecast that he is updating. He works in the Newport office of the
National Weather Service.
Frank Terrizzi, left, and Bonnie Terrizzi both transferred from the
now-closed Buxton office of the National Weather Service to the
radar station at Newport.
Photograph courtesy of the NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
The swirled shape is Hurricane Gordon as it was displayed on the
WSR-88-D digital radar in 1984 when it stormed toward the North
Carolina coast.
Staff photos by
DREW C. WILSON
Bonnie Terrizzi is a familiar voice to folks in North Carolina who
listen to the weather broadcasts. She's the radio ``voice'' behind
the Newport office's National Weather Service reports.
Staff photos by
DREW C. WILSON by CNB