Here’s a picture of the Canberra Region weather radar operated by the Bureau of Meteorology. I thought this might be of interest to a few people. The radar is located in the Tallaganda State Forest south east of Canberra. It’s something that most people I know use all the time, but nobody has ever seen.
For those who like to get their geek on, it’s a WSR-74S. WSR stands for “Weather Surveillance Radar”, the “74” indicates the year the first system was produced and the “S” suffix indicates that it operates at S-band in the RF spectrum, which is around 10cm wavelength or 3GHz frequency. The alternative WSR-74C operates at C-band.
These guys are pretty old, and Wikipedia tells me that they’ve mostly been replaced in the US by the WSR-88D.
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What’s Your opinion?
The weather radar revealed
Deref said :
Captain’s Flat Rd is the access road to the radar tower. The tower is approx 10km from Captain’s Flat.
BoM’s info on the fancy new Doppler ones: http://www.bom.gov.au/other/doppler/adelaide/index.shtml
Deref said :
Where, on the bar at the CF pub?
Captains Flat is close enough to Tallaganda State Forest to allow it to be the postal address for the radar. If you type Tallaganda into the maps app on an I-device you’ll end up at a service station in Braidwood.
Thanks LSWCHP, that’s interesting.
Not a weather geek myself, but going by your terminology explanation there, the replacement WSR-88D was first built in 1988, which isn’t really a great deal younger than a ’74. Has nothing improved in weather surveillance the last 24 years?
Gungahlin Al said :
+1
Yes, doppler wind would be great for us storm enthusiasts. In the case of The Gap microburst storms of 2008 (keep watching through to the end), doppler wind images provided quite useful information for one of the most powerful electrical storms Brisbane had seen.
And you can see if your location is about to get hammered if the BoM updates are not frequent enough.
*girly squeal*
Very cool – thanks!
But I thought it was a Captain’s Flat.
BOM still haven’t fixed the software to stop it showing the Gunning wind factory (why do they call them farms?) on days when it is generating.
That’s a good picture, which road do you take to get to it? I have always wondered.
Sounds neat! I should take a drive out there with my box brownie.
For the weather geek in me the impressive thing is that it’s located at the top of a ridge, around 1200-1300 m above sea level. Which is v high for a structure like this – it’s the highest of the BOM radar sites in Australia, and is arguably the most reliable with an uninterrupted view in all directions
Excellent! What road do you take to get to it?
I always wondered… Now I know. Thanks!
In Brisbane they also have wind doppler, which can produce pretty amazing pictures during storms. So perhaps it’s a newer setup.
We took a drive out there last winter, drove up the fire trail to it and it started to snow.. Very pretty, but very exposed site.
Thanks for sharing. That is pretty cool and yes I did get my geek on and look it up 🙂