OJAI : U.S. to Accept System for Tracking Weather

The federal government is expected today to take possession of the 98-foot Doppler radar system recently built atop Sulphur Mountain near Ojai, National Weather Service officials said Monday.

Under an agreement with Unisys, the giant information services firm contracted to build more than 150 such towers across the country, the radar system is not completed until federal officials formally accept it.

Unisys officials Monday were concluding a 72-hour test run--the final series of trials for the weather-tracking system, said Jerry McDuffie, area manager of the Oxnard office of the National Weather Service.

“If the test goes all right, we probably will have it by tomorrow,” he said Monday.

The weather service will begin conducting its own tests once it accepts the system as completed, McDuffie said.

“It will be on all the time, once it’s turned on and it’s working,” he said. “It will probably be functioning around the clock I would hope within the week.”

Each of the Oxnard office’s 15 meteorologists and managers will have to be specially trained on the system’s use, McDuffie added. Meanwhile, some Sulphur Mountain residents who lost a lawsuit asking that further studies be performed on the radar’s long-term health effects said they still plan to appeal.