Hurricane Laura Shredded National Weather Service Radar in Lake Charles, Louisiana

Live Storms Media storm chaser Brett Adair documented the damage to the Doppler radar at the NWS office at the Lake Charles Regional Airport.

Adair's photo showed the white radome, an enclosure resembling a large golf ball meant to protect the radar's antenna, was largely blown away, along with the radar's dish. These radomes, made of reinforced fiberglass, are typically built to withstand Category 4 winds.

The radar's last image was transmitted around 12:53 a.m. CDT, as the northern eyewall of Hurricane Laura was beginning to lash the radar site.

Video shot by Adair later in the day showed various mangled antennas, satellite dishes and weather instruments, but suggested little damage to the solidly constructed NWS office itself. Airport hangars at Lake Charles Regional Airport were heavily damaged.

A wind gust to 133 mph was measured by the automated wind instrument at the airport a little less than an hour after the radar transmitted its last image.

Based on photos of a damage swath from storm chaser Jeff Piotrowski, the damage at the radar and airport may have been caused by one or more mesovortices, small tornado-like rotations in the hurricane's eyewall that can inflict areas of more intense damage.

Given the danger from Laura, the NWS-Lake Charles office was abandoned, with backup support provided by other NWS offices, including Brownsville, Texas.

The NEXRAD Radar Operations Center, a NOAA division in charge of maintaining the nation's NWS Doppler radars, said in a tweet Thursday they're putting together a team to investigate the damage to the radar and begin efforts to restoration efforts.

It could take months for this radar to be rebuilt. In the meantime, the NWS will rely on nearby Doppler radars, such as in Houston, Shreveport and near New Orleans, to scan areas normally covered by the Lake Charles radar.

Maria Deja Vu

Maria was also a Category 4 hurricane when it roared ashore in Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, 2017. Since the radar was located in the mountains of eastern Puerto Rico at an elevation of 2,800 feet above sea level, it's possible it could have battled even stronger winds before giving way.

The radar was rebuilt by the following summer.

There have been other weather radars recently damaged by severe weather.

Super Typhoon Haiyan (locally known as Yolanda) made one of the world's strongest landfalls near Guiuan in the Philippines in 2013. In the process of this landfall, the Guiuan radar was sheared off its pedestal. It took more than two years to restore this radar and reinforce it.

On Dec. 19, 2008, wind gusts up to 140 mph near Reno, Nevada, punctured the dome of the NWS radar. Just six days later, a Christmas Day wind event with gusts up to 95 mph obliterated the rest of the radome and damaged the radar dish.

According to the NEXRAD Radar Operations Center, only five out of 159 NEXRAD radars have sustained major damage in over 25 years of operation.

One of the EF5 tornadoes in the April 27, 2011, super outbreak took out Huntsville, Alabama, NBC affiliate WAFF-TV's radar in a very similar manner to what we saw in Louisiana, with estimated winds of at least 200 mph.

That radar was replaced later in 2011.

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