Wind farms mess with Doppler radar in areas with lake effect snow

BINGHAMTON

Wind turbine blades won’t cloud weather forecasts in our area, says the National Weather Service Binghamton.

While a recent Associated Press article shed light on western New York wind farms causing problems for Doppler radar, Dave Nicosia, a warning coordination meteorologist with the NWS in Binghamton, says there is no reason why that will affect forecasting in Steuben County and neighboring regions.

Areas with numerous wind farms have experienced problems because moving propeller blades can reflect radar signals, which can be falsely interpreted as higher winds, precipitation or emerging storms.

“In the areas covered by the Binghamton National Weather Service, and I can only speak for my territory, the problem is minimal to none. We are not really impacted by this,” said Nicosia, adding, “the Buffalo service area is impacted more than ours.”

While Steuben County has operating wind farms in the towns of Cohocton and Prattsburgh, these locations are far enough away from radar sites that they do not cause interference, according to the NWS.

“The further and further radar beams get the higher they rise and you guys are far enough from our radar that it’s shooting over the top of any turbines that over there,” said Mike Evans, the science operations officer at the Binghamton NWS.

Evans said turbines do not become a problem until they are within 10-20 miles of radar centers.
But that’s not the case for surrounding counties.

The Associated Press article pointed out wind farms in Erie and Wyoming counties that are interfering with radar and causing complications forecasting approaching lake effect snow storms. The 195-turbine Maple Ridge Wind Farm on the Tug Hill Plateau in central New York is less than 10 miles from radar in Town of Montague, Lewis County, and has led to storms coming off Lake Ontario looking stronger than they really are, making it more difficult to detect and assess approaching lake effect snow storms.

“What tends to happen is the radar beams bounce off the turbines and these echoes can create interference and contaminate the data making it look like a storm is approaching or there is a pick up in wind speed,” said Nicosia.

Radar software can easily block structures, geographic obstacles like mountains and ridges, cell phone towers, and other objects that do not move on radar screens, but can not filter out spinning turbine blades.

“At this point any interference we have is minimal, but if we get wind farms popping up on all the hillsides it may change things ... Right now, there is a lot of work being done at the National Weather Service Operations Center and the University of Oklahoma and they are working on software to help meteorologists determine where the wind farms are and how the echoes interfere with the blades,” he said.

Evans said he thinks that in a few years computer algorithms will be developed that will be able to block out turbine interference.

Western states have reported false tornado alerts because of the problem.

The NWS has created a Web site about Doppler radar interference and can be visited online at www.erh.noaa.gov/buf/windfarm.htm.