You might have noticed over the last several weeks that we have been somewhat remiss on the number blog entries…but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been working in the Weather Lab! Obviously the crude disaster has kept us in an elevated state of weather and news coverage and the approaching “busy” hurricane season has us preparing for the active months ahead.
But we are also adding major software and hardware upgrades to our weather facilities as well. In addition to recent processor upgrade to Power Doppler 3000 (which gives us the highest definition radar in all of Southern Louisiana) we have unveiled the KATC Interactive Stormtracker. The interactive tracker takes National Weather Service Doppler radar imagery and allows the user zoom down to neighborhood level and gives full control to the user to watch weather in Acadiana or anywhere in the U.S. In addition, other tools such as user controlled animation, satellite imagery, land and water temperature contours and lightning data, there are exclusive tools for tracking severe storms, including the same TITAN storm tracking capabilities that we use here at KATC. And if that isn’t enough, there is an intergrated hurricane tracking program included and the utility even has overlays for tracking the oil spill in the Gulf. Check it out and give it a spin!
Finally Dave, Chris and I have been working weather products on the latest “state of the art” platform of TV weather graphics. This system is definitely the “next” level platform that will bring high definition satellite, radar imagery, and graphics to Acadiana. The “TruView Max” system (from WSI, the leading commercial weather graphics and data company) features a continuous live weather engine that ingests the latest satellite-delivered weather and computer forecast data with no rendering time. The weather imagery and graphics to be simply put, are awesome! Look for the debut of this system in June…we can’t wait to show it off!