A NEXRAD WSR-88D weather radar in California, the United States, operated by National Weather Service, NOAA.
- Station
- Los Angeles (KVTX)
- Site
- Sulphur Mountain
- Operator
- National Weather Service, NOAA
- Network
- NEXRAD WSR-88D
- Antenna
- 34.412° N, 119.179° W, 2,726 ft (831 m) above sea level
- Products
- Reflectivity, composite reflectivity, echo tops, vertically integrated liquid, velocity, correlation coefficient, differential reflectivity, specific differential phase (KDP), spectrum width
KVTX is the NEXRAD WSR-88D weather radar that the National Weather Service names Los Angeles. The antenna stands on Sulphur Mountain in Ventura County near Ojai, about 95 km west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles and 18 km from Ventura. The Los Angeles/Oxnard forecast office controls it, and the NWS gives its antenna elevation as 2,807 feet.
The radar was commissioned in December 1994. Its site drew early scrutiny: a GAO review looked at the Sulphur Mountain radar's performance, and a National Academies committee later assessed it, concluding that placing the radar above the mean coastal inversion height was justified. An area of the Pacific southwest of the site is seen by this radar alone. A forecast office case study of the February 1998 Ventura County flood credits the Sulphur Mountain radar, the closest of the three network radars that see southern Ventura County, with the lead time behind the flood warning.
A National Academies assessment noted that at the lowest antenna angle of 0.5 degrees the centre of the beam rises above 1.83 km (6,000 ft) beyond 75 km from the site, though half of the beam is below that level at that range. 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.