The NBC Owned Television Stations are taking on-the-ground weather reporting to the next level, deploying a new “StormRanger” fleet of trucks featuring the first mobile Doppler radars.
The first of the vehicles, which will serve the O&Os and Telemundo Station Group, is hitting the road Monday and will roam the Northeast corridor.
Two more StormRangers will start their maiden voyages by Friday covering the Dallas market, as well as Chicago, Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area, the company said.
Consumers will be able to track the fleet through the stations’ websites and apps. Users will also get push alerts when a StormRanger is tracking weather in their home market.
“We are boosting our weather forecasting capabilities by building, from scratch, the first-of-its-kind fleet of mobile weather radars in the country because we know how important weather is to our viewers,” said Valari Staab, NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations president. “All of our stations will have access to this groundbreaking weather technology so they can deliver even more lifesaving weather information to their communities.”
The StormRangers feature an X-band, dual polarization, Doppler weather radar with a range of 75 miles fixed atop a Dodge Ram truck. Meteorologists can position the trucks in areas that don’t have fixed weather radars.
