Study:Gaps in NEXRAD Radar Coverage

Tornado events from the National Weather Service (NWS) verification database are examined for the period 2006-2017 against radar coverage, the latter binned in terms of events inside and outside the range implied by the 6000 ft above ground level (AGL) bottom-of-the-beam at each of the NEXRAD radars. In addition, radar coverage is separately quantified by the percent surface areal coverage of the said 6 kft AGL range at each NWS Weather Forecast Office, a new metric that quantifies the relative density of coverage. Damage due to tornado events is quantified in terms of intensity. Fatalities and injuries are quantified along with NWS performance metrics in terms of radar coverage and geographical characteristics. There is relative parity between the percentage of tornado events warned or unwarned inside and outside of the selected range. Unwarned fatality, injury and significant damage events have weak to no statistical dependence on radar coverage in a linear model. 2019 NWS (National Weather Service) Submitted Public Domain 1931