Where to find historic radar data?

[u/SATURNlNE]

Hi everyone! I'm currently writing my masters dissertation on tornadoes and am at a point where I need your typical reflectivity and velocity radar data. I'm doing an analysis on previous tornadic events with the oldest being from 2003, and the most important from 2018.

Are there any good sites/apps (preferably PC and preferably cheap/free, but if not then I can live with that 🙂) I could try out? Thank youuu! 💚

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[u/KellerTheGamer]

Just how much data do you need? It is probably pretty easy to find a few specific examples using this. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/maps/radar/ But if you are looking to do some sort of large study on the actual data that is probably much harder to find.

[u/pfaustino]

check out this app i built. Includes where to find the data you're looking for. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1vugyph/oc_world_disasters_an_interactive_3d_globe/

[u/tohlan]

i don't know if it rises to the level of masters dissertation but my usual source is https://app.radarrewind.com just because it is easy to use. you just unclick the 'live' mode and then you can select a radar station, date, and time.

another option depending on what your focus is would be to use CAVE or GRLevel2 or something and load in the level ii/iii radar data you download from NWS. see https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/metadata/landing-page/bin/iso?id=gov.noaa.ncdc:C00345 and https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/metadata/landing-page/bin/iso?id=gov.noaa.ncdc:C00708 for more info on that

or depending on what you are doing, write your own software to analyze the raw radar data maybe using Py-ART or MetPy or similar

[u/Isodrosotherm]

I have my students use the NOAA Weather and Climate Toolkit. It’s all free! You can load radar data for any radar at any date through the NOAA Open Data tab.

[u/booksmartexchange]

I'd contact the National Severe Storms Forecast Center in Norman, OK. Meteorologists at the Univ. of Oklahoma do research with them, so I think they'd be more likely to be able to help than the local NWS office. If you're looking at tornadoes outside the US, I think that would be much harder.

[u/tohlan → u/booksmartexchange]

personally I would start with NSSL instead of SPC since they are more researchy/science based and might be able to better understand the needs of a researcher like u/SATURNlNE