2016 Fort Knox Trip

On Wednesday July 20th, staff from the Louisville NWS office along with two students, one from Penn State and the other from the University of Alabama, visited Fort Knox, a river gauge in Sheperdsville, and a Kentucky Mesonet site at Bernheim Forest. The group began the tour at Louisville's radar site which is located next to firing ranges on Fort Knox. The location of the radar gives forecasters a better view of weather over the more populated Louisville area.

Mark Adams from the Fort Knox weather office showed the group day to day activities that he and his guys perform on a daily basis in the weather office, located at the airfield.

The radar sits on top of a 30 meter tower which is the tallest tower the NWS uses. Radars across the country will use different height towers for the given terrain around a radar. The shortest towers used are 5 meters.

The radar inside the radome has a dish that measures 28 feet in diameter. The radar is so well balanced that a person can move the whole radar with one hand.

This is the mesonet site at Bernheim Forest where the tour met Billy who works for the Kentucky Mesonet which is ran by Western Kentucky University. Billy showed the group the workings of the site which can measure wind speed/direction, solar energy, rainfall amounts, and dewpoints. This unit is solar powered and there are 67 other mesonet sites in Kentucky that Billy and Western Kentucky maintain.