COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KTRK) — The ABC13 Alert radar network has been giving you the best coverage in Southeast Texas for the past year and is about to get even better.

Introducing our newest radar on the network, located right in the heart of Texas A Aggieland.&M University – where Chief Meteorologist Travis Herzog and Meteorologist Rachel Briers studied meteorology.

Rachel came by&M to see the installation of the latest 13 Alert Radar.

READ MORE: How ABC13’s new 13 Alert radar network provides more accurate severe weather coverage

“The weather radar we are bringing to Texas A,&M Campus is a gap-filling weather radar. It’s designed to complement the large network we already have in the country and fill in some low-altitude, ground-level data gaps,” said Leigh Goode of Climavision. “Not only will it fill that gap in observation and cover the entire 60-mile radius, but it will also benefit the atmospheric science program here. Students will be able to interact with that data in their research projects and all other forms of real-time.”

If you have visited Texas A&M’s Campus, you have certainly seen the O&M building with its iconic radar on top.

Rachel said that learning and interacting with the old radar helped her a lot during her time at university, but the new radar will have even more features.

ABC13 spoke with Dr. Erik Nielson, a Texas A&M professor of atmospheric sciences and also an Aggie classmate of Rachel – on the benefits of the new X-band radar.

“When we talk about the new dual polarization radar, it will emit a beam that oscillates horizontally, but also one that oscillates vertically, so we get a two-dimensional view of what we’re seeing. This will help us identify hail or large raindrops more easily,” Dr. Nielson said.

The radar will be of great benefit to College Station and the surrounding area, but it will also be crucial for tracking storms as far away as Houston.

“When you think about the radars in the area, there’s the main National Weather Service radar, which I understand is on FM-646 in Galveston County, and it’s a very, very long range radar. But then there are high resolution radars on both the Intercontinental and the Houston Hobby. And then this one,” Dr. Nielson said. “So when you look at all of these radars, you see a nested coverage moving upriver, or where things might be coming from, up into the Houston area, which allows for a cohesive picture of something where all of these different radar data come together, and you can use that to understand what’s happening.”

We are also very pleased that the new radar will be a teaching tool for the next generation of meteorologists.

“And that’s where the educational value lies, because students will see things when they look around,” Dr. Nielson said. “Now they can look out the window, they can see what they see, and then they can see it in high-resolution data on the radar screen and develop those concepts.”