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Critical Station
NEXRAD stations sometimes return data that is entirely spurious, and the scan is not reliable
for producing an image of targets in the atmosphere. This is known as "going critical" and usually does not last
longer than a few hours. Velocity imagery produced from scans of a critical station will be mostly range-folded
and unreliable. A critical station scan is often wholly contaminated with strobed data.
The following reflectivity and velocity images from VPS Eglin Air Force Base in Florida
illustrate what happens when a station goes critical. Range-folding throughout the velocity scan indicates
ambiguous velocities for all "targets" detected in the scan. Data as uniform and widespread as these in the
reflectivity image indicate spurious reflectors that represent erroneous and invalid target information.
| Critical Station error | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| VPS: Eglin AFB FL (34.88N 82.22W): Base Ref 124nm / Elev=0.5 deg / 1.16 km²/pixel Precip Mode / VCP 21 09/11/98 10:04 UTC - Max: 47 dBZ | VPS: Eglin AFB FL (34.88N 82.22W): Radial Vel 124nm / Elev=0.5 deg / 1.16 km²/pixel Precip Mode / VCP 21 09/11/98 09:58 UTC - Max: -68 kts, +75 kts | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||