National Severe Storms Laboratory

The National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather research laboratory under the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. It is one of seven NOAA Research Laboratories (RLs).

NSSL studies weather radar, tornadoes, flash floods, lightning, damaging winds, hail, and winter weather in an effort to improve warnings and forecasts and to save lives and reduce property damage. Researchers at NSSL developed the first Doppler weather radar, and have contributed to the development of NEXRAD (WSR-88D). The group conducts various research experiments using mobile radar systems and continues to make advances in the field of meteorology.

NSSL has a partnership with the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies (CIMMS) at the University of Oklahoma that enables collaboration and participation by students and visiting scientists in performing research. The Lab also works closely with the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) and the National Weather Service Norman Forecast Office, which are co-located at the National Weather Center (NWC) in Norman, Oklahoma. The NWC houses a unique combination of University of Oklahoma, NOAA and state organizations that work together to improve understanding of weather.

In 1962 a research team from the United States Weather Bureau's National Severe Storms Project (NSSP) moved from Kansas City, Missouri to Norman, Oklahoma, where, in 1956, the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory had installed a 3 cm continuous-wave Doppler Weather Surveillance Radar-1957 (WSR-57). This radar was designed to detect very high wind speeds in tornadoes, but could not determine the distance to the tornadoes. In 1963, the Weather Radar Laboratory (WRL) was established in Norman and, in the following year, engineers modified the radar to transmit in pulses. The pulse-Doppler radar could receive data in between each transmit pulse, eliminating the need for two antennas and solving the distance problem.

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