Governments in Texas’ Dallas-Fort Worth region are nearing a deal that would make it the first urban area to test a new approach to weather forecasting.
Like Twitter’s many ground-level dispatches, the system is based on a series of small radar devices that can be scattered around cities and their suburbs, rather than a large beacon that takes a sweeping but imprecise view.
The widespread death and damage inflicted last week by tornadoes throughout the South demonstrated that warnings using current weather technology are limited. Meteorologists and public safety officials said they hoped that the new system could prevent deaths from tornadoes and flash floods.
“Because we have a network of radars, it’s like many pairs of eyes,” said V. Chandrasekar, deputy director for research for the Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere, or CASA.
“We can see things faster than things can change,” said Chandrasekar, an engineer at Colorado State University.