COPALIS BEACH — The National Weather Service hopes to start construction on a new facility to house a Doppler radar facility in northern Grays Harbor County in March.
The new radar system will help forecasters better predict the severity of winter storms as they approach the North Olympic Peninsula, the National Weather Service has said.
The site, selected two weeks ago, will be at Langley Hill near Copalis Beach, said Ted Buehner, meteorologist at the National Weather Service.
The lease for the land has not yet been signed, as the details are still being ironed out, Buehner said.
“Because it has not been finalized, we can’t do anything with the land, but the overall plan is to have some form of a ribbon-cutting and groundbreaking once all that has been determined,” he said.
Once the site is cleared, a road fit for heavy machinery will be created, utilities to power the radar tower will be added, and support concrete will be poured.
The work is expected to last throughout the summer.
The radar could be operating in late September, Buehner said.
An Air Force training radar facility for the site is now being refitted in Oklahoma, he said.
“It is kind of like your grandmother’s used car. It doesn’t have a lot of miles on it,” Buehner said.
“It is exactly the same technology that we already use, and our technicians already know how to service it.”
Existing radar can track precipitation in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, but it can’t detect low-level weather bearing down on the coast. The Olympic Mountains form a blockade that prevents Seattle-area radar from detecting the severity of those storms.
Buehner said the state-of-the-art, dual polarization radar system will show the intensity, perception and snow levels of a storm before it arrives on the Pacific Coast.
Buehner noted that the 125-mile radius will cover such West End towns as Forks, LaPush, Neah Bay and Clallam Bay-Sekiu, as well as giving forecasters a better view of what’s coming for the whole Peninsula.
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Mountlake Terrace, who has championed the coastal radar system for years, secured a $2 million down payment for the radar system in 2009.
An additional $7 million was included in the 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act.
