Portland weather radar: KRTX

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

Station
Portland (KRTX)
Operator
National Weather Service, NOAA
Network
NEXRAD WSR-88D
Antenna
45.715° N, 122.965° W, 1,614 ft (492 m) above sea level
Products
Reflectivity, composite reflectivity, echo tops, vertically integrated liquid, velocity, correlation coefficient, differential reflectivity, specific differential phase (KDP), spectrum width

KRTX is a NEXRAD WSR-88D weather radar in the hills of Washington County, Oregon, northwest of Portland, about 8 km from Scappoose and 21 km north of Hillsboro. The National Weather Service lists it as Portland, OR and runs it from the Portland forecast office on NE 122nd Avenue. A photo in Wikipedia's article on Scappoose shows the radar on Dixie Mountain Road. NCEI gives the antenna elevation as 1,728 ft including the tower.

The Portland office says the radar and its pedestal were installed in the mid-1990s and designed to last 25 years. The Radar Operations Center installed the dual polarization upgrade in September 2011 and replaced the azimuth bull gear in November 2016. From 19 August to 3 September 2019 the radar was down while technicians refurbished and replaced the pedestal, the third major phase of the Service Life Extension Program; during the outage the office pointed users to the Langley Hill (KLGX) and Camano Island (KATX) radars in Washington. Wikipedia's list of NEXRAD sites gives March 1995 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.

Nearby

  • Portland 19 mi southeast
  • Vancouver, Washington 16 mi east
  • Hillsboro 13 mi south
  • Beaverton 18 mi southeast
  • Gresham 30 mi southeast
  • Scappoose 5 mi northeast
  • Saint Helens 13 mi northeast
  • Forest Grove 15 mi southwest
  • Longview, Washington 29 mi north
  • Salem 53 mi south

Nearby radars

  • Langley Hill (KLGX) 111 mi northwest
  • Seattle (KATX) 173 mi north
  • Pendleton (KPDT) 198 mi east

Oregon radars · United States · Find your radar

Sources: NWS WSR-88D radar list (158 sites), NWS Radar Operations Center, NEXRAD network sites, NWS API, radar station KRTX, NCEI HOMR, NEXRAD stations flat file, NWS Portland, Portland radar KRTX down for upgrade, 19 August to 3 September 2019, NWS Portland, office home page, NWS Radar Operations Center, NEXRAD/WSR-88D (ROC) history, Wikipedia, Scappoose, Oregon, Wikipedia, NEXRAD (list of sites).

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