Radar Firm Dispute Delays Weather Service Move : Oxnard: The agency’s plan to relocate from Los Angeles has been slowed by a contract disagreement over $200 million in computer software changes.

Plans to relocate the National Weather Service’s Los Angeles office to Oxnard have fallen more than two years behind schedule because of a contract dispute between the government and a radar equipment firm, officials said.

The move is part of a $3-billion nationwide modernization program to provide meteorologists with more accurate and longer-range forecasting data. It has been delayed because the radar contractor, Unisys Corp., contends that the company has incurred costs not covered in the original contract, said Charles L. Hosler, chairman of the program’s national research council and a meteorology professor at Pennsylvania State University.

As a result, Unisys has stopped production, Hosler said last week.

Under the modernization plan, 115 Weather Service stations nationwide will be fitted with Next Generation Doppler Radar, also called NEXRAD, which measures precipitation and supplies photographs of atmospheric conditions every 30 minutes, Hosler said. The radar units now used by the Weather Service date back to the 1950s and turn out only two photographs a day.

“We will be able to predict severe weather conditions earlier and put out storm warnings sooner,” Hosler said. “It’s a whole revolution.”

Hosler said the modernization would also add four offices in the state and would move operations in Los Angeles to Oxnard. One of the new radar units will sit atop Sulphur Mountain, near Oak View, Hosler said.

But computer software changes amounting to more than $200 million that Unisys said were not part of the deal have put production on hold and delayed the scheduled 1992 deployment until at least 1994, said Bill Beckham, defense systems vice president for Unisys.

Some of the added costs were due to production oversights, he said, but others stem from post-agreement modifications requested by the government.

In 1990, Unisys was awarded a contract worth $359 million over six years for 165 NEXRAD units. When the company requested additional funds, the government threatened to cancel the contract, saying Unisys had missed software development deadlines. Then the government started a review of the program, causing further delays.

However, the government and Unisys are near an agreement that would end the dispute, officials said.

“We’re at the stage in negotiations of trying to decide who is responsible for what,” Beckham said. “But once we settle, I think we can make up some of the lost time.”

Meanwhile, the country’s single remaining weather-observation satellite is running out of fuel and may drift out of control soon. Replacement satellites were expected to be launched starting last year, officials said.

“If we lose one of those, it’s like losing our eyes,” Hosler said of the satellite, which is expected to expire by next summer and is the only one of its type in orbit.

The new satellites will be advanced “geostationary,” earth-orbiting models. Each will sit in one spot about 23,000 miles above the earth, Hosler said.

“They will give us continuous soundings so that we may track storms,” he said.

Installation of the radar units will begin in the Midwest, where extreme weather in the form of tornadoes and hail plague Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado. The last units will be installed on the West Coast.

The two current offices in California are in Los Angeles and Redwood City. Under the new plan, the Weather Service will have offices in Oxnard, Redwood City, Eureka, Fresno, Sacramento and San Diego.

The Los Angeles office performs forecast duties for all of Southern California, from Point Conception to Death Valley and as far north as the Mono County line.

The Oxnard office, to be located near Rice Avenue, will receive data from Sulphur Mountain and make forecasts for the non-desert areas of Los Angeles County and for Ventura, Santa Barbara and Orange counties. Oxnard was chosen because it had geographical qualities that made it easier to collect weather data than Los Angeles, Hosler said.

“It’ll be one of the largest and most sophisticated forecast offices in the country,” Hosler said. “It’ll have a higher level of equipment and personnel” than Los Angeles. The Oxnard office will have 25 workers, said Art Lessard, Southern California coordinator for the modernization program.

Fitted with an advanced weather-information processing system, the site will translate data into pictures and graphs that depict qualities in the atmosphere, Lessard said.

The desert regions of Los Angeles County will be served by a new forecasting office in Las Vegas, he said.

The headquarters for the Weather Service is in Maryland.

Weather Service employees in Los Angeles have mixed feelings about their office’s scheduled move north.

Meteorologist Jerry McDuffie said the drive to Oxnard would pose a hardship for many longtime employees and may even force some into early retirement.

“But personally, I’m for the move,” said McDuffie, who lives in Camarillo.

But Weather Service employee Pat Rowe of Los Angeles said she hopes the dispute between Unisys and the government continues forever.

“I’ll quit before I drive to Oxnard,” she said.