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BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) - Texas A&M's campus will undergo an exciting renovation on Saturday, which will ultimately serve the community through providing more robust storm tracking technology to the Brazos Valley.
The Aggie Doppler Radar, often termed "ADRAD," has operated on top of the Eller Oceanography and Meteorology building for over 50 years, but its service has recently come to an end. Instead, a private weather forecasting company has partnered with Texas A&M to bring cutting-edge weather technology to the Brazos Valley.
The new radar will be placed on the O&M building by a helicopter on Saturday afternoon, and will be operational shortly after that. Once the new radar is fully established, it will be run 24 hours a day and provide radar updates to its partners every minute.
One of its partners is the First Alert Weather Team, which has exclusive access to this radar data and will utilize it within their coverage. This cuts the preexisting radar refresh rate of six minutes, down to one minute, meaning that folks across the Brazos Valley will benefit from even more robust storm tracking technology.
Additional updates regarding the exact time of the renovation will be released as we receive them.

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Does anyone happen to have info on roughly what time they will be using the helicopters to place the new radar on the building? We live fairly close to campus and we'd love to watch from one of the side parking lots

No definite info. Maybe check out if a cargo helicopter is on the ramp this pm. In general, best condition for VFR and winds/bumps would be 0900-1130.

This is a commercial X band Dual polarity radar. 1 rpm rate (Rusty said 1 second - 60 rpm last night but I was pretty sure that was wrong). Definitely a nice set up. Reading the KBTX story not sure we will have access all the time or on their website. The way they mentioned the use made it sound like it might be special use/broadcast only when I read it closely.

It's currently being put together in lot 55. I didn't check progress today, it might be done.

It's in Granger - actually east of Granger on the north side of the lake

I wonder if they will re-open the observation deck to the public. I remember in the 90's I was invited to the top of the tower a few times to meet VIPs to the department.

Does this have anything to do with KTRK abc13 out of Houston? They keep showing a commercial saying that they will have a radar in Brazos County soon.

I got to throw paper airplanes off the top of it as a boy scout back in the early '80s. One landed in the Harry's parking lot.

That's pretty awesome.