THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 12, 1994 TAG: 9406120113
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940612 LENGTH: Long
The radar at Morehead City is part of a state-of-the-art line of coastal defenses that the National Weather Service is installing to warn eastern North Carolina, the Outer Banks and Hampton Roads of approaching ocean storms or tornadoes.
{REST} With a maximum range of 250 nautical miles, four WSR-88 radars with overlapping search patterns will provide better Middle Atlantic storm coverage.
When the new equipment is on line in Virginia and North Carolina, the old Cape Hatteras weather radar , which has been a solitary electronic sentry on the coast, will be retired.
``A couple of weeks ago there was a big forest fire west of Morehead City and our new WSR-88 Doppler radar was able to see wind shifts in time to warn Forest Service fire-fighting crews,'' said Thomas Kriehn, meteorologist in charge of the just-completed Morehead City facility. ``As far as I know, that's the first time a radar has been used to report the wind and weather over a major forest fire,'' Kriehn said. ``It allowed the firefighters to anticipate which way the blaze would spread.''
The wildfire burned about 6,000 acres in Craven County.
Display consoles of all four of the new radars will be interconnected between the four sites and each station will have a county-by-county view of developing weather conditions in North and South Carolina and in southeast Virginia.
Dedication ceremonies for the facility near Morehead City will be held at 2 p.m. today. Among the attending military officers will be Brig. Gen. Fred McCorkle, commanding general of the Marine Air Station at Cherry Point.
The Cherry Point aviators have their own special feed from the new Morehead City radar so they can watch the weather over a vast ocean and coastal area.
The four key radars that will guard the Middle Atlantic coast are part of a $2 billion National Weather Service program to update the nation's forecasting equipment.
In Raleigh, the first of the North Carolina Doppler radars has been on line since early spring and is now linked to the Morehead City facility.
A third WSR-88 is being installed at Wilmington and a fourth is being completed near Wakefield, Va., about 30 miles west of Norfolk.
All of the radars are expected to be up and running early next year.
Because the Doppler ability allows the radars to watch winds revolving inside a rapidly moving cloud system, the WSR-88s can detect forming tornadoes as well as paint a stunning picture of what is going on inside a hurricane's eye.
By the end of this hurricane season in November, the new Morehead City radar will handle all of the coastal storm tracking now done at Cape Hatteras.
For nearly 40 years, a World War II weather radar at Cape Hatteras has been the only land-based, early warning outpost for Hampton Roads and the Carolina coast.
Veteran U.S. forecasters at Hatteras will have their personal lives jolted by the phasing out of all but minimal local weather services at their Buxton facility near the famous lighthouse.
``We'll be leaving for Morehead City on July 18,'' said Bonnie Terrizzi who is half of an unusual husband-and-wife National Weather Service forecasting team. Both she and her husband, Frank, are being relocated to Morehead City where their new duties will include operating the super radar.
Bonnie Terrizzi, for the time being, will continue to do the daily marine weather radio broadcasts that have made her voice familiar to thousands of Outer Banks fishermen.
``I'll be broadcasting from Morehead, but it will be piped up to Cape Hatteras and rebroadcast over the marine transmitter there,'' she said.
Most of the weather computers and display consoles at Cape Hatteras have been moved to new buildings at Morehead City.
``We're even going to take one of the big white domes at Buxton,'' Kriehn said. The dome protects a directional radio antenna used to track weather balloons.
The balloon tracking is another Bonnie Terrizzi job that she will take with her to Morehead City.
But the old storm-tracking radar will remain in operation during the 1994 hurricane season.
Wallace H. Demaurice, meteorologist in charge of the Hatteras weather installation, said the old radar had about the same range as the new WSR-88s, but lacked the fine-tuned Doppler ability to to ``see'' and measure wind direction and speed inside whirling storms.
``Too many good people have counted on our old radar for too many years,'' Demaurice said. ``We're not going to shut it down until we're absolutely sure the new Morehead City radar system is working perfectly.''
by CNB