1997
Addressing the 5-minute delay

The production of NEXRAD attributes comes at the end of each volume scan, resulting in a 5-minute delay from the lowest-level scan. It is then another five-minute delay before the next update arrives.

We discovered that, by processing the lowest-level velocity data immediately, without waiting until the entire volume scan had been packaged, the areas of shear could be defined in near real-time. We are still the only company to provide this 5 minute difference. There would still be a five-minute delay before the shear marker was updated, but meteorologists could switch between NEXRAD and their live radars, and point out how far the storm had moved since the previous track analysis.