A NEXRAD WSR-88D weather radar in West Virginia, the United States, operated by National Weather Service, NOAA.
- Station
- Charleston, WV (KRLX)
- Operator
- National Weather Service, NOAA
- Network
- NEXRAD WSR-88D
- Antenna
- 38.311° N, 81.723° W, 1,099 ft (335 m) above sea level
- Products
- Reflectivity, composite reflectivity, echo tops, vertically integrated liquid, velocity, correlation coefficient, differential reflectivity, specific differential phase (KDP), spectrum width
KRLX is the NEXRAD WSR-88D weather radar for Charleston, West Virginia, standing in Kanawha County a few kilometres west of the city. The National Weather Service runs it from the Charleston forecast office at 1754 Hendrickson Drive in South Charleston, which serves the central Appalachians and the middle Ohio Valley. The NWS Radar Operations Center lists the station as Charleston, WV with the radar site at Charleston, and NCEI records it under the name Charleston with WBAN number 53834, its record beginning in August 1995.
The NWS radar list gives the antenna elevation as 1,213 feet and the owner as the NWS. In August 2021 the radar was down for about two weeks while technicians replaced the pedestal, the third major project of the NEXRAD Service Life Extension Program; the office said the radar had passed the 25 years it was designed for and that the work should keep it running for another 20 years or more.
Dunbar is about 6 km and South Charleston about 7 km from the antenna, and Charleston's centre about 9 km to the east. Saint Albans is about 13 km to the west, Nitro about 16 km, Huntington about 64 km to the west and Beckley about 76 km to the south-east.
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.