WFTV, which made quite a name for itself during the past two hurricanes seasons, has beefed up its weather equipment in time for this storm season.

The station has revamped its radar. The new system has a much higher resolution -- 16 times more colors when checking out storms -- and has 100,000 watts more power.

In addition, the there's a new pedestal for WFTV's Doppler dish that allows it to make a sweep of the region 10 times faster. I saw this in action one night on WFTV's digital radar channel, and it looked like someone was playing a VCR tape on fast forward -- I think took only about 20 seconds to complete an entire sweep of the area. Pretty cool.

WFTV also has added a new experimental storm forecasting model for hurricanes.

Chief meteorologist Tom Terry has a behind the scenes tour of the Severe Weather Center 9 on WFTV.com, explaining the new toys. It's worth a look.