Doppler Weather Radar Back In Operation
The Doppler weather radar – which has been out of service since February of this year — appears to be back in operation, with the page noting that “testing and observations continue through Monday.”
Screenshot from the BWS Doppler Radar page:
In May 2014, a spokesperson said, “The Doppler weather radar, which provides a moving graphic of rain and storms, is a specialised and complex radar that uses the Doppler effect to produce velocity data about objects at a distance.
“The current Doppler weather radar was purchased and installed in July 2004. The Radar replaced a smaller and much lower powered system, and was primarily intended to enhance the provision of weather forecasting in Bermuda.
“The radar experienced an outage earlier this year and extensive troubleshooting has been necessary in order to identify what the issue was and what parts were required to restore the system to service.
“The necessary repair parts have been ordered and once received on-site technical assistance will be provided by the vendor to complete the installation, inspect the system to identify any further enhancements which will extend the working life of the system and to help ensure that the operating platform remains robust for a number of years to come.”
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Thank goodness! The BWS can’t get its forcast correct at all, on Thursday and Frday last week they said rain all weekend, then what happened, perfect weather all weekend long! Could have went on the boat, but we thought it was suposed to rain, at least this will tell us what to expect in the next few hours, but we need better forcasting from the BWS!
My hubby is a weather watcher by hobby, studying multiple sources and he is usually right…he predicted rain this weekend based on what he saw. Bermuda can be so tough to predict because of so many factors.
If you’re making a go or no-go decision based on their forecast, it would be beneficial to not only take note of their public forecast, or their marine forecast, but also to read their forecast discussion. There are limitations to how detailed they can be if they’re only forecasting “morning” and “afternoon” periods for example. So if there is going to be one 30 minute thunderstorm at 6am then its quite possible that the “morning” forecast will be for thunderstorms, but few people will be up to notice.
In the case of this past weekend, there was significant forecast uncertainty about how much rain, if any would fall. This was reflected in the forecast discussion quite clearly. In fact, some of those sentiments of uncertainty were also indicated in several articles regarding a possible tropical/subtropical development that ended up not manifesting.
Finally, just keep in mind that forecasters are literally predicting the future state of the atmosphere for a rock in the middle of the ocean.
The forecast discussion can be found by clicking on the “detailed public” and there is a link on the top right. http://weather.bm/ForecastDiscussion.asp
Hope it stays up and running!
Not bad, only took 8 months !
So glad to see it back- it is really useful to watch for close in weather effects for the short term.
DO u ever watch the weather on TV? They tell us it is actually raining when its not. BWS does a much better forecast, It is hard to forecast for a small dot in the ocean, Be thankful we even get a forecast
YEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS