A NEXRAD WSR-88D weather radar in Texas, the United States, operated by National Weather Service, NOAA.
- Station
- Amarillo (KAMA)
- Operator
- National Weather Service, NOAA
- Network
- NEXRAD WSR-88D
- Antenna
- 35.233° N, 101.709° W, 3,622 ft (1,104 m) above sea level
- Products
- Reflectivity, composite reflectivity, echo tops, vertically integrated liquid, velocity, correlation coefficient, differential reflectivity, specific differential phase (KDP), spectrum width
KAMA is the National Weather Service's WSR-88D weather radar for Amarillo. The antenna stands in Potter County 11 km east of the city centre, in the Texas Panhandle. It is part of the NEXRAD network and is run by the NWS forecast office in Amarillo, at 1900 English Road, which serves the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles.
Amarillo has a long radar history. A modified Navy radar was installed as a storm detection unit in 1952, and in 1961 one of the Weather Bureau's first network weather radars, a WSR-57, was commissioned here. The WSR-88D was commissioned in March 1994; the NWS notes it was the second commissioned in the country and the first in Texas. A later dual-polarization upgrade added differential reflectivity, correlation coefficient and specific differential phase to the radar's base products.
Radar shows rain, snow and hail, not cloud, and nothing below its lowest beam; far from the antenna the beam passes high above the ground.