“We do a really rigorous preventive maintenance schedule on it,” Johnson said. “You have to look at all the data sources available,” Johnson said.Īnd there’s some good news for the 20-year-old radar: The Weather Service has been continuously upgrading and maintaining its Doppler radars. With all these other tools available, some government forecasters say, the Mount Um radar location really isn’t all that bad. Forecasters even use eyewitness reports of downpours, hail and high winds. Weather satellites reveal approaching storm clouds. “You bite your lip, maybe say something under your breath,” quipped KNTV’s Mayeda.Īutomated rain gauges indicate how fast the rain is falling in selected locations. So if it’s raining cats and dogs and the Mount Um radar is down, forecasters fall back on other tools. “Access can be part of the problem, especially in strong winter storms,” said Logan Johnson, the warning coordination meteorologist at the Weather Service’s Monterey office. Accidents, fallen trees and mudslides make the trip a lot longer. In good weather and light traffic, that’s a 90-minute drive. If something breaks, the Weather Service sends a two-person crew from Monterey to fix it. Yet another problem: Mount Um’s radar can be hard to maintain and repair. She often wonders: “Is that rain I’m seeing in the North Bay right now, or is that virga?” “We pick up a lot of virga, which is rain that actually evaporates before it hits the land,” said KPIX forecaster Roberta Gonzales, who has studied Bay Area weather for 20 years. KGO and KPIX installed high-definition Doppler radars in the North Bay. So two local television stations were forced to take matters into their own hands. In addition, he said, the microwave signal proved to be unreliable, so the Weather Service had to install an expensive high-speed telephone line anyway.Īnother problem: The Mount Um radar leaves holes in coverage for the North Bay - holes big enough to miss some “atmospheric river” storms. ![]() Null said the Navy’s promises didn’t work out because the Navy space wasn’t free after all and the government agencies were just too different to effectively cooperate. It was close enough to Monterey for maintenance and a low-cost microwave link to send the radar data. The Bay Area radar needed to be on a mountain near the newly chosen Monterey office, so the Weather Service chose Mount Um. And since the old radar in Sacramento didn’t cover the Central Coast, the service planned to place one of the new radars in the Bay Area. Over the protests of local forecasters, who worried about losing 200 years of collective experience with San Francisco Bay Area microclimates, the Weather Service decided to move to Monterey.Ībout the same time, the service was rolling out its new “Nexrad” Doppler radars nationwide. The Weather Service also liked the potential for cooperation with the Navy, said Null, who was working for the service at the time. Then the Navy offered “free” space in Monterey near its worldwide meteorology teaching, research and forecast centers. ![]() It considered several locations, including San Jose State and San Francisco State. In the late 1980s, the Weather Service wanted to move its Bay Area office out of Redwood City to save money. The new radar recorded less than three-quarters of an inch. ![]() Soon after the radar was installed in 1994, San Francisco set a new 24-hour rainfall record of 6.16 inches. ![]() Over San Francisco, the radar can’t see anything below 5,000 feet.
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