Wind farms can appear sinister to the weatherman-appear like a violent storm/ tornado

Wind farms can appear sinister to the weatherman

By DIRK LAMMERS (AP) – 4 days ago

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Wind farms have been blamed for disrupting the lives of birds, bats and, most recently, the land-bound sage grouse.

Now the weather forecaster?

The massive spinning blades affixed to towers 200 feet high can appear on Doppler radar like a violent storm or even a tornado.

The phenomenon has affected several National Weather Service radar sites in different parts the country, even leading to a false tornado alert near Dodge City, Kansas, in the heart of Tornado Alley. In Des Moines, Iowa, the weather service received a frantic warning from an emergency worker who had access to Doppler radar images.

The alert was quickly called off in Kansas and meteorologists calmed the emergency worker down, but with enough wind turbines going up last year to power more than 6 million homes and a major push toward alternative energy, more false alerts seem inevitable.

New installations are concentrated, understandably in windy states like Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and Iowa, all part of Tornado Alley.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hRBR6a_JUqYm7ZD1hzzJEx4fmgBwD9AAR0182

:)

;)

"Yet because weather radar seeks motion to warn of storms, there's no way to filter out the spinning blades." I call bullshit on that. Storms are mobile, the windmill farms are not.

A radar on a fighter looking down sees echos of everything, the ground, houses, moving cars, etc. All of it appears moving because the fighter is moving. The radar scope would be a mass of reflected echos and making locking or even identifying threats impossible.

For a long time look down shoot down radar was considered a hypothetical but impossible improvement to radar.

Eventually software engineers were able to design algorithms use Doppler shift to determine the objects velocity and remove anything too slow to be an aircraft or missile.

Now all fighters use look down, shoot down because to not have it would mean you are blind to threats moving below the horizon.

So it is only impossible until someone makes it possible.

Which for me, renders the whole story moot.