Meteorologists, researchers, programmers, and self-proclaimed "weather geeks" at Weather Decision Technologies, or W.D.T., are finding new ways to track the weather.
Mike Gauthier, of W.D.T., says "Some of the things they plan on doing this year is flying an unmanned areal vehicle into a tornado. They've got remote control helicopters to follow behind the storm to see storm damage so real news worth type of events."
They have already worked on a way for you to do virtual storm chasing. Finally, you can see what the chasers see.
J.R. Hehnly of W.D.T. says, "We have a product that, basically, storm chasers are taking with them. They've got lap tops. They've got Internet. They've got cameras we are taking that along with the GPS data. and plotting their position on a map and making it so you can look on line and see what these chasers are seeing in real time. "
The company has also been involved in global forecasting, such as during the recent Olympics. In the future you still will not be able to control the weather, but you will be able to control the weather maps. W.D.T. helped design the interactive radar we use on kjrh.com.
For instance, if you live in Sand Springs but the meteorologist is talking about a storm somewhere else, now with your computer you can control the radar to see the weather just for your area. You are in charge and can see the weather right down to where you live.
W.D.T.'s lightning tracking software is not just experimental, it was used last year to help something even more popular than weather in Norman.
"Remember last fall the OU game that got postponed because of the lightning storm. That was us. We pulled the trigger and said hold off on that."
Lightning, flood, and tornado warnings like these will be more precise and timely in the future. Also, the weather graphics we show on tv will be much more detailed and easy to understand and manipulate. They are also working on improving forecast accuracy.
"We've got future radar capabilities, we have a new product called Armor that takes in the growth and decay along with the modeling that we can project the Nextad radar out to about 9 hours."
From apps for your iPhone to data for ships at sea and the military. The future of forecasting involves some amazing tools that you will have access to. W.D.T. is pushing the envelope on technology to make sure you receive the weather you want when you want it.
