Huntsville weather radar: KHTX

A NEXRAD WSR-88D weather radar in Alabama, the United States, operated by National Weather Service, NOAA.

Station
Northeast Alabama (KHTX)
Site
Hytop
Operator
National Weather Service, NOAA
Network
NEXRAD WSR-88D
Antenna
34.931° N, 86.084° W, 1,762 ft (537 m) above sea level
Products
Reflectivity, composite reflectivity, echo tops, vertically integrated liquid, velocity, correlation coefficient, differential reflectivity, specific differential phase (KDP), spectrum width

KHTX is the NEXRAD WSR-88D weather radar the National Weather Service calls Northeast Alabama. The antenna stands at Hytop in Jackson County, a small town on the Cumberland Plateau just south of the Tennessee line, about 51 km northeast of Huntsville. The NWS placed the radar there to close gaps in radar coverage around Huntsville and Chattanooga. Its dome was raised at a dedication ceremony on April 25, 1997; the radar went into operation on July 1, 1997 and was commissioned that December.

The NWS office in Birmingham ran the radar at first. Control passed to the new Huntsville forecast office when it opened in January 2003, and NWS Huntsville operates it. During the tornado outbreak of April 27, 2011 the radar lost its communications link because of damage to infrastructure in the area, and the outage lasted for the rest of the event. Huntsville, Scottsboro, Madison and Chattanooga are among the nearby places.

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.

Nearby

  • Huntsville 32 mi southwest
  • Chattanooga, Tennessee 45 mi east
  • Scottsboro 18 mi south
  • Madison 41 mi southwest
  • Decatur 56 mi southwest
  • Winchester, Tennessee 18 mi north
  • Tullahoma, Tennessee 31 mi north
  • Albertville 46 mi south
  • Stevenson 14 mi east

Nearby radars

  • Nashville (KOHX) 95 mi north
  • Birmingham (KBMX) 128 mi south
  • Atlanta (KFFC) 139 mi southeast

Alabama radars · United States · Find your radar

Sources: NWS Huntsville, station history, NWS Birmingham, special report on the Hytop WSR-88D, NWS service assessment, the historic tornadoes of April 2011 (PDF), NWS Radar Operations Center, NEXRAD history (PDF), Wikipedia, Hytop, Alabama, NWS API, radar station KHTX, NCEI HOMR, station KHTX, NWS Radar Operations Center, NEXRAD network sites, NWS WSR-88D radar list (PDF), NCEI NEXRAD inventory, site list, Wikipedia, NEXRAD.

Radar data: NOAA National Weather Service (NEXRAD). Place names: GeoNames, CC BY 4.0.