Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Group Hears From Meteorologist

Few things in the world are more discussed than weather.

Farmers talk about it in connection with their crops. Strangers discuss it because they have nothing else to talk about.

There's even an old saying about weather -- "Everyone talks about it, but no one does anything."

This isn't quite true. While no man can control the weather, meteorologists do what they can to predict what it will be in any given area at any particular time.

Lee Harrison, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, based in Shreveport, La., spoke to a group of emergency personnel Thursday, Sept. 26, as well as the Prescott Kiwanis Club.

At the Kiwanis meeting, Harrison presented local weatherman John Teeter with a series of gifts for his 30 years of service to the NWS as a volunteer observer. Teeter received a citation, a pin and letter of commendation from the NWS.

He said the Shreveport office is responsible for most of Southwest Arkansas's weather reporting, though the forecasting currently comes from the Little Rock branch.

Currently, all severe weather watches comes from Kansas City, Mo., while warnings are generated in Shreveport or Little Rock.

According to Harrison, within the next 18 months, the Shreveport office is scheduled to take over all forecasting for Southwest Arkansas, including Nevada County.

In addition, a new radar site is being erected in Montgomery County to help cover this region. This site was chosen after last year's tornado in Fort Smith, and should be completed in the spring of 1997.

Harrison said a study was done to identify areas where there were gaps in the radar coverage. The two main ones were in Western Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma.

Originally, he said, the Montgomery County site was third on the list of priorities until the twister hit Fort Smith without warning, resulting in millions of dollars of devastation. Then, it was moved to the top of the list.

At this time, radar tracks storms in the Nevada County at an altitude of about 7,000 feet. Because of this, storms like the one which hit Cale recently (which was estimated to be around 5,000 feet high) go undetected by radar.

Harrison said the NWS was tracking the storm cells near Cale at the time the tornado hit, but were unable to see the rotation inside the storm, which created the tornado.

With the Montgomery County radar, he said, Prescott and Nevada County will be in good shape.

However, there could be a slight delay in getting the system operational on schedule. Harrison said the original radar systems were built by Unisys.

Once this series of radars was completely installed, the company shut down its radar operation. But, with the new Doppler radar system, more units are needed. Harrison said the company is currently looking for components to finish building radar systems with.

Harrison said nothing beats a good ground watch system with trained weather spotters. "The warning process," he said, "is to get people geared to respond. Ideally we need a couple hours of advance notice to get spotters out."

Preparation, though, is the name of the game.

When questioned about the possibility of a siren warning system, Harrison said there may be better ways of alerting the people to potential deadly weather. Part of the problem is the cost of the siren systems, along with keeping them maintained.

In talking about the Doppler system, Harrison said it operates by measuring wind speed in front of and behind storm cells.

Under normal circumstances, when a thunderstorm forms it has warm air rising, with the cooler air falling. When conditions are right, these air patterns form circular motions causing rotation within a thunderhead. It is this rotation, Harrison said, which spawns tornadoes.

However, with the Doppler system, he said, it is much easier to track the storms and the rotation within them.

He informed his audiences the old type of radar relied on "echoes" to chart storm paths. Their severity was displayed on screen by various shades of grey. The new Doppler system, though, gives color readouts in 16 color levels with each color a different intensity.

These systems are hooked to computers and can plot the track of a storm, its direction and roughly predict the rainfall which will be dropped on any given area.

This, he said, also helps the NWS predict where flash flooding may occur.

"It's a valuable tool," Harrison said. "We're still learning how to work with it."