Panorama view of the mouth of the Columbia River from Cape Disappointment, WA

Wave Imaging Marine Radar at Cape Disappointment, WA (Columbia River Mouth)

In May of 2013, the Haller Research Group erected a Wave Imaging Marine Radar (WIMR) station on the US Coast Guard watch tower at Cape Disappointment, WA. This installation was initially funded by the DARLA MURI project; at this time Argus cameras and infrared cameras were also installed in the Cape Disappointment lighthouse by OSU's Coastal Imaging Laboratory and the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory.

The radar is located at UTM Coordinates 5125229 N, 418909 E, elevation 90 m (NAVD88).

Site Images (click for larger view)

Airborne side view of Cape Disappointment
Airborne side view of Cape Disappointment
Airborne top view of Cape Disappointment
Airborne top view of Cape Disappointment
View of the mouth of the Columbia River with fronts and possible internal waves visible
View of the mouth of the Columbia River with fronts and possible internal waves visible
View of the radar on the Coast Guard tower with a front visible in the river
View of the radar on the Coast Guard tower with a front visible in the river

Links

Wave-averaged movie of last 48 hours

Roughly every 1/3 of an hour, the radar records 64 rotations (about 1.5 min). Each frame of the below video is a pixel-by-pixel average of a 64-rotation recording. Averaging over this time frame effectively removes the fast-moving features from the images, leaving only the slow-moving features, such as fronts. The video shows the close range (~6km radius) on the left and the full recorded range (~12km) on the right.

Download: [WebM] [OGV] [MP4 (H.264)]
Note! The video and these links are updated every hour, and the last hour's video is removed. If these links do not work, try reloading the page. Otherwise, view the sample video, below.

If the current video is unavailable (e.g. if the radar system is not operational), see this video for a sample: [WebM] [OGV] [MP4 (H.264)]