Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
The NEXRAD weather station won't be fully operational for another five months, but is already able to pick up more accurate details about Michiana's lake effect snow, one of the two primary reasons the service is being established in Kosciusko County.
Weather updates are now available to news services, but county warnings won't be issued by the weather station until next spring.
Weather radar has been available since Halloween and the first big benefit arrived a week ago when unseasonable snow fall left about 4 inches in Warsaw and as much as 18 inches north of South Bend near Lake Michigan.
The North Webster weather station eliminates a void in coverage in southwest Michigan and northern Indiana east of LaPorte that weather stations in Grand Rapids, Indianapolis and Chicago could not cover.
"This was the crux of our argument over the past four to five years. The sliver of the southern tip of the lake which gets the most snow will be totally unprotected in the winter," said Sam Scaman, meteorologist with WSBT, channel 22 in South Bend.
Scaman said the visible improvement was striking.
"We've been able to see lake-effect snow better than we've ever been able to see it before," Scaman said.
"You could see that whole (snow) squall just setting up and sitting there."
While Michiana is a haven for lake effect snow from Lake Michigan, Warsaw occasionally feels the brunt. Of the 42 inches of estimated average annual snowfall in Warsaw, about 25 percent of it is the result of lake effect, Scaman said.
The ability to detect varying wind directions at different atmospheric levels and tracking weather activity 20 to 30 miles off shore of Lake Michigan are two keys to forecasting lake effect snow, Scaman said.
Having a close proximity to the lake (60 miles as the crow flies) also helps because lake effect is a shallow phenomenon that's more difficult to track when the radar is hundreds of miles away, said Michael Sabones, meteorologist in charge at the weather station.
"As you get farther away from the radar site, the curvature of the earth curves down and that radar beam gets higher and higher above the surface," Sabones said.
"It will be a bigger benefit when the station begins making its own forecasts next spring, which coincides with the region's tornado season, Sabones said.
Until then, staffers are being trained in a makeshift mobile office. Most of the 14 workers arrived within the last few weeks. By the time the construction of the permanent office is completed a year from now, the office will employ about two dozen people, Sabones said.
Although all of the staff has some experience, they're learning about procedures and contacts lined up ahead of time.
"That means coordinating emergency managers, media outlets (and) law enforcement officials," Sabones said.
The weather station will soon have a web site that will provide some weather details and links to other weather date, he said.
