New coastal radar now online near Copalis Beach; local meteorologists thrilled

Thanks to the tire­less efforts of our two U.S. Sen­a­tors — par­tic­u­lar­ly our junior sen­a­tor, Maria Cantwell — the Pacif­ic North­west final­ly has a state-of-the-art Doppler radar sta­tion locat­ed on the coast, capa­ble of assist­ing mete­o­rol­o­gists in prepar­ing more accu­rate and use­ful fore­casts for our region.

The radar sta­tion, which has been under­go­ing con­struc­tion since mid-spring, was acti­vat­ed for the first time two weeks ago on August 8th. Because it is in test­ing mode and will con­tin­ue to be until the end of Sep­tem­ber, fore­cast­ers do not have con­tin­u­ous access to data from the sys­tem. But when it is on, it sends infor­ma­tion to Nation­al Weath­er Ser­vice per­son­nel in Seat­tle and Portland.

Today, it pro­duced some nifty images show­ing that a strong front is mov­ing in. Here is an image record­ed not long before 9:30 AM, which clear­ly depicts heavy pre­cip­i­ta­tion occur­ring just offshore:

Test­ing on the new Lan­g­ley Hill sta­tion should be done in time for the storm sea­son this year, which means that weath­er fore­casts for the com­ing win­ter should be more accu­rate than they have been in the past.

Though we have long had a Doppler radar instal­la­tion on Camano Island, it can’t see much of the coast due to the Olympic Moun­tains. That has left coastal towns and inland cities vul­ner­a­ble to incom­ing storms.

With this new sta­tion, we’ll be able to be bet­ter prepared.

“Too often in the past, our weath­er radar cov­er­age gap meant that fore­cast­ers didn’t have the most com­plete data set pos­si­ble to help Pacif­ic North­west com­mu­ni­ties pre­pare for big storms,” not­ed Sen­a­tor Cantwell in a news release cel­e­brat­ing the sta­tion’s activation.

“This new, state-of-the-art radar tech­nol­o­gy will enable Wash­ing­to­ni­ans to bet­ter pre­pare for the impact of the big Pacif­ic storms on busi­ness­es and homes.”

Read­ers inter­est­ed in see­ing a chronol­o­gy of the radar sta­tion’s devel­op­ment and con­struc­tion should check out the com­pre­hen­sive overview that Cliff Mass has assem­bled at his Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton site. It’s extreme­ly informative.

Con­grat­u­la­tions are in order to Nation­al Weath­er Ser­vice on get­ting this new radar instal­la­tion up and run­ning, and again to Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell for secur­ing the fund­ing. This is a vital emer­gency pre­pared­ness invest­ment that has long been over­due. This radar sta­tion is an excel­lent exam­ple of a cru­cial pub­lic ser­vice that was only made pos­si­ble thanks to our tax dollars.

When we pool our resources togeth­er to cre­ate a com­mon wealth, we can do amaz­ing things. Kudos to every­one involved in this project!