"It's a bloodbath and I'm the rubber duck"

That's a line I'll never forget.

I was 13, pitching in a county league baseball game, losing by 13 runs.

As I took the mound in relief, in what I think was the first time I ever pitched in a game, my coach shouted from the dugout: "It's a bloodbath and I'm the rubber duck."

I laughed the entire inning, recorded three straight strikeouts and secured my spot in the starting rotation.

That story popped in my head today while thinking about the "Great Battle of the Radar" here in Jacksonville.

NWS RADAR 

VS.

First Coast News RADAR

Those are the only two in town. We use our own to track systems, the rest of the broadcasting and weather world uses NWS.

The NWS RADAR is fine... in fact it's great. It takes info from several vertical tilts and creates a nice volume scan for us to use and show storms in 3-D. 

We change the tilts on our radar manually and do not get a full volume scan... however our data comes in immediately. NWS required a couple of minutes to go through their full scans. Hence our "Two Minute Advantage."

We can see cells moving along with our sweep in real time. However, the NWS RADAR looks is a bit more herky-jerky, as cells appear to jump across the screen every couple minutes.

I KNOW... THIS IS FASCINATING.

BLOODBATH... and I'm just floating around in the madness.

Now, from February 13-26 NWS RADAR will be taken offline for some awesome upgrades. They're going to a dual polarity radar, which is totally awesome and will be very helpful. However, ours will still be the only live RADAR... in fact, during the days NWS is offline, our Doppler will be the only one in town.

That's just a heads up as we get closer to severe weather season. We can get severe storms anytime here in North Florida, but as we get into February we could see more build up. 

Here's My Severe Weather Discussion For Today's Topic: TORNADOES!!!!

Here's my severe weather discussion from Monday, the topic: LIGHTNING!!!!!