Good news for those of us in the Pittsburgh area....NWS states
on their website that the on-site radar (PBZ) will be among the first in the nation to receive the dual-pol(arization) capabilities. Dual-pol, essentially scanning on both a horizontal band and a vertical band vs. simply horizontal, will allow for a more detailed picture of the weather, from improved precipitation type forecasting with bright banding, to being able to more accurately forecast hail and shear.
Note that from July 6 to 16, PBZ will be offline, so you will have to view Pittsburgh weather from the surrounding sites in Cleveland, State College, Wilmington, and so on. However, it is all in the good, and definitely is worth the money (I took a class while at NWS on the benefits of dual-pol....if you have GR2Analyst, it will mean an even more detailed picture of convection!)
I'm thinking the reasons why they picked Pittsburgh are not only because of the wide variety of weather (ice, snow, hail, brightbanding, all of which dual-pol radar is beneficial) but also because the radar is on-site (essentially next to the building) so that any malfunctions in the test phase can be fixed easily.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the dual-polarization radar, view more details here:
http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/dualpol/
