A NEXRAD WSR-88D weather radar in Oregon, the United States, operated by National Weather Service, NOAA.
- Station
- Medford (KMAX)
- Site
- Mount Ashland
- Operator
- National Weather Service, NOAA
- Network
- NEXRAD WSR-88D
- Antenna
- 42.081° N, 122.717° W, 7,513 ft (2,290 m) above sea level
- Products
- Reflectivity, composite reflectivity, echo tops, vertically integrated liquid, velocity, correlation coefficient, differential reflectivity, specific differential phase (KDP), spectrum width
KMAX is a NEXRAD WSR-88D weather radar on Mount Ashland in Jackson County, southern Oregon, about 13 km south of Ashland and 30 km south of Medford. The National Weather Service lists it as Medford and runs it from the Medford forecast office, whose radar page labels the imagery KMAX, Mt Ashland. Mount Ashland is the highest peak in the Siskiyou Mountains at 2,296 m, and with its antenna at 7,561 ft in the NWS radar list, KMAX is the fifth highest of the 158 WSR-88D sites.
In April 2018 the Radar Operations Center made Medford one of two test sites for scanning at a lower elevation angle, and in September 2018 KMAX officially became a low angle elevation site, with its lowest scan at 0.2 degrees below the horizontal. Wikipedia's list of NEXRAD sites gives January 1996 as the start of its data record.
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.