SYRACUSE (AP) -- The National Weather Service says wind farms in upstate New York are interfering with its Doppler radars, making it more difficult to detect and assess approaching lake effect snow storms.
The spinning blades on the towering turbines cause problems when they're in a radar's line of sight to the sky by reflecting some of the signal, which can be falsely interpreted as wind or precipitation.
While the reflections can make storms coming off lakes Erie and Ontario look stronger than they actually are, the structures can also act like a wall and hide a storm from forecasters.
Bill Hibbert, a meteorologist and radar specialist with the weather service in Buffalo, says forecasters are working around the problem while better software is developed to filter out the interference.
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