Most people are unaware but the South African Weather Service and begun the installation of numerous doppler radar weather systems throughout the country, word has it the new radar systems will replace the current radars in time and while some may shrug it off, the installation of these new doppler weather radars is a huge step forward for the meteorological society in South Africa. Doppler radar is far more helpful to storm chasers and is far more accurate in the early prediction of severe storms which show signs of development.

The current radar station which has been active for the past few days though is still in it's testing phase is located in Pretoria, these radars are fairly large in size as can be seen by the image in the top right. I am definitely looking forward to the public release of the doppler radar information as it is a needed tool in meteorology which has been lacking in South Africa for quite some time.

From wikipedia:

Doppler radar is radar that makes use of the doppler effect to produce data about objects at a distance. It does this by beaming a microwave signal towards a desired target and listening for its reflection, then analyzing how the original signal has been altered by the object(s) that reflected it. Variations in the frequency of the signal give direct and highly accurate measurements of a target's velocity relative to the radar source and the direction of the microwave beam. Doppler radars are used in air defense, air traffic control, sounding satellites, police speed guns^[1], and radiology.

The specific term "Doppler Radar", due in part to its extremely common use by television meteorologists in on-air weather reporting, has erroneously become popularly synonymous with the type of radar used in meteorology. Most modern weather radars use the pulse-doppler technique to examine the motion of precipitation, but it is only a part of the processing of their data. So, while these radars use a highly specialized form of doppler radar, the term is much broader in its meaning and its applications.

For more information read - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_radar