Word: normans
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Since the tax threshold on cars is $30,000, most of the affected models are foreign, but U.S. dealers are complaining all the same. "It's killed us," laments Norman Scott, a Mercedes-Benz dealer in Houston. "Those guys in Washington are crazy." Consumers seeking to avoid the levy are switching to cars whose prices fall just below $30,000. Mercedes and Lexus sales have plummeted 27% and 10%, respectively, in the first quarter, but Acura dealers report no major dent in sales...
...National Weather Service's new $3 million radar outpost in Norman, Okla., proved its worth on its first day of operation last March. That evening a series of thunderheads rolled across the southern Oklahoma hill country. One storm cell appeared -- at least on conventional radar -- to be relatively benign. But not to Nexrad (for Next Generation Radar), a new detection system that is powerful enough to track a swarm of insects moving across a wheatfield 50 km (30 miles) away. The domed instrument peered into the swirling winds and raindrops inside the clouds and saw a tornado aborning. The Weather...
...weather forecasters, the radar station in Norman represents the bright edge of what is technically possible. It is the first of a proposed network of 160 stations that will eventually blanket the U.S. with high-power radar, vastly improving the accuracy of predictions. The network is part of an ambitious $2.25 billion modernization of the National Weather Service, almost a decade in the making, that also features a fleet of advanced satellites, a mosaic of automated weather stations and a high-speed information network linking them all together...
Unfortunately, the Norman outpost has also become a symbol of broken promises, missed deadlines and unfulfilled potential. Two more radar systems, one set for installation near Cape Kennedy in Florida and another outside Washington, are still sitting in packing crates, victims of a bitter contract dispute between the agency and the manufacturer, Unisys. Meanwhile, virtually every other part of the modernization program is either over budget, technically flawed or facing stiff opposition in Washington. The program could cost up to $1 billion more than originally estimated and is not likely to be completed until 1998, several years later than planned...
...less than two weeks. But within this time frame, a number of innovations have enhanced the meteorologist's prophetic powers. Supercomputers build mathematical models that show the interaction of wind, sun, temperature and humidity across the entire globe. And Doppler radar -- the technology at the heart of the Norman station -- is adept at spotting the destructive midsize squalls that have traditionally taken forecasters by surprise. By bouncing microwaves off the tiny droplets in the center of a cloud and picking up the echoes, Doppler systems can map the relative velocity of wind currents within the cloud. High-velocity winds...