NOAA’s new interactive radar viewer webpage with expanded radar data will allow you to observe the type and movement of precipitation falling from the sky. Looking at several radar images over a period of time — or a radar loop — can offer clues about where and how fast the rain or snow is falling.
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Source: NOAA
On the new page, radar data can be layered with National Weather Service watches, warnings and forecasts and is presented on a dynamic map that allows zooming and panning. And we also provide radar images more frequently and at four times higher resolution than before. Weather radar can track rain and snow, and see potential for flash flooding.
Plus: The new GIS-based webpage delivers radar data in a more flexible format, so emergency managers can incorporate that data into their own situational awareness databases to help them make local decisions
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The radar webpage can be saved on your mobile device home screen just like an app, so you can use this powerful weather monitoring tool on the go.
Other improvements include:
Access to certain dual-polarization radar products to help differentiate between precipitation types, such as rain and snow;
More radar data, including 159 NEXRAD Doppler radars and 45 Terminal Doppler Weather Radars. For times when a single radar is out of service, you still have coverage since radar beams overlap;
Ability to customize data to any domain, and data layer preferences can be saved or bookmarked;
Radar animation loops can be saved, shared and used on social media;
The new page’s infrastructure allows for easy integration of new datasets, like satellite imagery, in the future; and
The webpage is more reliable now that it’s on an operationally supported system 24/7.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
