Baron’s Klyde to Tackle Weather for Bay News 9
Bright House-owned news channel in Tampa, Fla., rolls out advanced radar system.
By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 1/7/2009 2:40:00 AM MT
Bay News 9, the 24-hour cable news channel in Tampa, Fla owned by cable operator Bright House Networks, is now using a new advanced radar system from Baron Services to give a more accurate picture of storms and precipitation in the Tampa Bay area.
Bay News 9 is the first news organization to adopt Klyde, Baron’s C-band klystron dual-polarization (KHDD) radar that operates at over one million watts of power and uses a new calibration technique developed by Baron that greatly improves accuracy. The Klyde system, branded by Bay News 9 as Klystron 9, will allow meteorologists to see storms farther away and can also obtain more information about the type of precipitation within an individual storm. (Scroll down to see before and after images.)
“This new radar further demonstrates Bright House Networks’ commitment to its customers by supporting Bay News 9 and its prominent position in weather forecasting,” said Elliot Wiser, Corporate Vice President of Local Programming for Bright House Networks, in a statement.
Dual-polarization radars paint a more accurate picture of the type of precipitation in a storm by transmitting high-powered signals in both the vertical and horizontal orientations simultaneously. But until now, dual-polarization weather radars could only be calibrated when precipitation was present. Baron says that its new patent-pending calibration technique allows Klyde to be quickly and easily calibrated at any time under any weather conditions, greatly improving the system’s accuracy and performance. Baron is now using the same calibration technique in a system-wide dual-polarization upgrade of the 171 NEXRAD radars operated by the National Weather Service (NWS), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Department of Defense (DOD).
“With Klyde, we have jumped the curve,” said Bob Baron, President and CEO of Baron Services, in a statement. “It has more power, more precision and more capability than any other commercial Doppler weather radar in the world.”
Old radar image (click to enlarge):
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New Klystron 9 radar image (click to enlarge):
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