longacre writes "Due to its limited range and slow scan times, the backbone of weather prediction in the U.S. since the early 1990s, the NEXRAD radar system, is deeply flawed in the eyes of meteorologists. A new system being tested by researchers at the NOAA and four universities called the Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) network aims to fill the holes left by NEXRAD, using radar nodes piggybacked onto existing infrastructure, such as rooftops and cell towers. From the article: "Aiming for nearby clouds, CASA's low-power nodes send out 10-watt microwave frequencies, which then bounce back before being sent to a processing unit in the bottom of the node over a gigabit Ethernet connection. The information is then wirelessly transmitted to a central location over a 2 megabit/second DS3 connection. Here, data from all the nodes is collected and run through weather predicting algorithms, which are growing more sophisticated as this new data is made available — and as new threats speed up research." Testing has begun in Oklahoma, Houston and Puerto Rico and initial installations could begin in 5 years." Link to Original Source
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