Important note (11:45a Tuesday): A counter-argument for PAR, not based on tornado warnings or weather, is here . It is worth your time. That said, the essay below is still valid.  The protective dome being placed over the Phased Array Radar at the National Severe Storms Laboratory.   Behind the scenes to much of the public, the weather science community has been furious with the Trump Administration's proposed and actual cuts in meteorological research. One of the institutions affected is NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL). Surprising, to many, I agree with some of those cuts. The reason is that some of this research has simply not been paying off after years and years of experimentation.  For a quarter-century,  NSSL has been experimenting with Phased Array Radar (PAR) which allows the atmosphere to be scanned more quickly than using a conventional radar. Work began in 2000 and the first real-time data was collected in 2004. One of the selling poi...