Building a Weather Foundation with Radar

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When Bay News 9 in Tampa, Fla. took delivery of one of the first live radars developed in-house at Baron Services in 2001, it was laying the groundwork from which its other weather investments would spring.

"When we put in that early radar, we were determined to get the best platform we could at the time. We also knew there would be more money coming to us later for upgrades," explained Mike Clay, Chief Meteorologist at the 24-hour cable news channel. The year after its initial radar investment, the station put Baron's VIPIR® to work. And as of January, 2006, Bay News 9 goes to air every day with high-resolution Doppler data supplied by a powerful radar upgrade.

"When we saw the RVP8 processor, we knew this was the future," Clay said, "and a good time to upgrade the resolution of our radar. We'd anticipated this, and had spent some time the year before setting up a new 256- color level palette in FasTrac® and VIPIR. So by January 2006 when the upgrade came in, we were ready to go."

Keep it Simple
A four-year veteran of the station, News Director Mike Gautreau knows that viewer-friendly displays and ease of understanding take great precedence. "It's important for us to distinguish our coverage from the competition," he said. "We try to tell viewers a story with the weather, because that's the best way for them to understand its relevance. We use equipment that keeps it basic for viewers at home, but detailed for our meteorologists to really get into, and do their jobs."

"The weather can be difficult to explain to viewers. But what is obvious to them is the increased definition of our radar, especially when using it with MicroTrac™, which shows the storms at a very local level. They don't have to be meteorologists to understand the end of the story we're telling."

Beauty in the Details
Taking place just in time for severe weather season, the upgrade has pleased the Bay News 9 team. "We're very happy with it. Everything the radar did before, it does even better now," Clay said.

It wasn't long, however, before the fully-assembled system would be seriously put to the test. "It seems like any time we've done an upgrade, severe weather follows immediately. On February 3, we had 8-12 inches of rain dumped on us." Baron radar personnel back in Huntsville, Ala., remotely dialed into the system, tweaking it online, so that the Bay News 9 team would have the best data to show on-air. Later, Clay's team used the radar's VHDD mode to retrieve high-resolution velocity data in real-time. "The data is just terrific for determining if a cell is producing anything dangerous," he said. "We're seeing things we hadn't seen before, as well as a big decrease in ground clutter.

Every radar, of course, needs a quality display, and Bay News 9 is fortunate enough to have both 2D and 3D displays from Baron Services. "We use both FasTrac® and VIPIR all the time. Being able to have both is really key. Since we're a 24 hour news channel, we'll go on-air with severe coverage, and stay on for an extended period. We have our own switcher in the studio, so when we're live, we can go between different views, controlling the show like a director."

A History of Success
"Bay News 9 is kind of different, because it's dominated by weather," Clay continued. "We started working with Baron Services in 2001, beginning with Pinpoint Doppler 9000, and moving into VIPIR. It's almost like the radar was sitting there waiting for the 2004 hurricane season to happen, when all hell broke loose."

"We had more e-mails than a single person could ever read from people who appreciated our hurricane coverage," Gautreau said. "On top of that, we have a support system that's second to none. With many vendors in the television industry, once the product is in, they're done. But our Baron sales rep, Jeff, calls and asks if we're pleased, if it's working as advertised, and to see if we need help customizing the systems. When the hurricanes came through, I felt like Baron had our back. That kind of support is very important to us."

"Weather drives the ship here," said Clay. "This summer, we had the normal thunderstorms, and luckily, no hurricanes to deal with. But this radar is a very configurable, familiar tool. When it does hit the fan, we'll be there."