Wind Farms on Radar?

A caller to the Gene Countryman show this evening asked if wind farms could be seen on weather radar. The answer is yes.
The Beaumont, Kansas, wind farm as detected by Wichita's WSR-88D radar a few minutes ago, circled in red.

Two wind farms southwest and northeast of Dodge City.

Comments

  1. I thought they had an algorithm to remove wind turbines from interfering with the WSR-88Ds. How do the wind farms affect down range propagation of the signal? Is there attenuation, shadowing or folding issues? These two farms are close to the installation, 23mi to the SW and 17mi to the NE. The concerns I have would be around the moving blade reflections even at higher alt. elevation slices. The beam is not perfect and presents as a lobe with some energy still striking the blades. It is obvious this is occurring now in clear air mode. How does it present in the other modes? A cursory comparison between the Base and Composite show that it is still affecting the higher degrees of elevation in the Clear Air Mode. It would be a shame to have wind farms affect one of the best tools for remote monitoring of the mesoscale environment.

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  2. Richard,

    I have seen radar images when the wind farms were taken out. I don't know why they were so visible last night. I thought it might be a temperature inversion but that was not the case based on the DDC sounding.

    Mike

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  3. Mike,

    I had looked at the sounding as well, and didn't see a good explanation (I still remember the Skew T log P stuff, barely). However I have some experience in RF engineering and propagation, although not in Radar. Primarily in VHF to Microwave systems. Given everything else ignored about these systems, one has to wonder if this could be put into the pile as well. My first rule of engineering is to make no assumptions, be it power, interconnects, correct components or reassurance by authorities that a "item" has been taken care of.

    Of course I am making an assessment from data that is homogenized within the composite display, so this could be an artifact of that process. Also, I am assuming the wind turbine removal algorithm was indeed in use. Making an assessment from a limited amount of data is fraught with error, but the cursory look seems to be inconsistent with what should be happening.

    Thanks for the blog it is very interesting to look at the events you are bringing up.

    Richard

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  4. I live in Kansas and am studying to become a meterologist. The winds farms are almost always visable, even in precip mode, though they do not seem to show up often in velocity unless very strong winds are occuring. The thing about it is that when storms start developing within about a 10 to 15 mile range, the storm reflectivity completely overtakes the wind farm reflectivity, and most of the time the wind farm disappears. When over the wind farm sites, storms always overtake the wind farm reflectivity. Wind farms are a very good thing for this country and here in Kansas, and even though there is some radar disruption on fair weather days, it does not degrade the use of WSR-88D for storm detection.

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