Alex Rakes France and Utah Radar Upgraded

Here are a couple of items to distract you from pandemic-fueled political coverage today.  

Storm Alex Rakes Northwest France

A powerful midlatitude cyclone named Alex (such storms are named in Europe) moved across northwest France overnight, bringing damaging winds.  Below is a Meteosat loop showing the development of the system and its movement Bretagne and Normandy.  

Source: CIRA

The UK MetOffice analysis for 0000 UTC 2 October shows the low centered over nothwest france with a central pressure of 969 mb. 

Source: UK MetOffice

Peak wind gusts relayed through some of my channels by Tim Hewson of the ECMWF include 186 km/h (116 mph) on Belle-Île, and island just off the south coast of Bretagne, 157 km/h (98 mph) in Groix, 142 km/h (88 mph) in Granville, and 135 km/h (84 mph) in Sarzeau.  These are sites on or very near the Atlantic or English Channel coasts.  However, even inland, Cholet had a gust of 129 km/h (80 mph).

Northern Utah Radar Upgrade

The KMTX (Promotory Point) National Weather Service radar was installed in 1995 and celebrated its 25th anniversary this summer (see Happy 20th Anniversary KMTX! from five years ago for some background on its history.  This week, however, it underwent a major upgrade, lowering the angle for the lowest elevation radar scan from 0.5˚ to 0˚.  That doesn't sound like much, but it's important for a radar that sits on a mountaintop because it means that the radar will be able to sample lower altitudes over the Great Salt Lake and surrounding valleys and basins.  This means improved detection of precipitation systems and some forms of severe weather in all seasons, as summarized by the NWS infographic below.  

Source: NWS

Many of us have wanted this to happen since the install of the radar, but the upgrade has been tied up largely by politics (and perhaps some technical matters) for some time.  

If you are wondering, this change probably won't affect radar coverage in the Wasatch much.  The 0˚ scan is severely blocked by the initial western face of the Wasatch, so higher angle tilts, such as the 0.5˚, will remain important.  Most of the radar images I share for the blog are based on the 0.5˚ tilt, but the ones you see elsewhere may be hybrid or composite images constructed with information from multiple tilts as the NWS radars perform a series of scans at multiple elevations.  

Below are a couple of videos from the UCAR/COMET program describing how radar works and the operation of National Weather Service Radars.