Sioux Falls, SD — One of the tools that the National Weather Service meteorologists use to predict the weather, create forecasts, and issue severe weather warnings for northwest Iowa is down, and has been for a few days.
Meteorologist Amanda Penning with the National Weather Service Sioux Falls office tells us their Doppler radar isn’t broken, but it is offline for a planned upgrade.
She tells us what that entails.
She says with the radar offline, it is a little more of a challenge for meteorologists in the office to do their job, but it’s not impossible. And people shouldn’t be concerned if severe weather does occur.
Penning says there are a lot of WSR-88D units (that’s what the weather service calls their Doppler radar units) in the United States, and they’re all being upgraded.
Coincidentally, the National Weather Service Weather Radio transmitter for the tri-state area on 162.4 MHz is also down at this time. Penning says they’re also upgrading that so it will be more robust and not break down so often. She says this does NOT affect the other weather radio transmitters in the area such as the one near Sheldon at Sanborn, the one near Worthington, the one near Milford, or the one near Storm Lake.
