The advantages of operating weather radar in a “surveillance” mode, i.e., recording automatically all precipitation at ranges from a few kilometers to a few hundred kilometers, can be achieved without sacrifice of regional performance. The operation can be made efficient in terms of five-dimensional resolution (three spatial, time and intensity, and it is resolution on the record that counts), size (or cost) of installation, and size (and convenience) of the record. There is some reciprocity among those terms. We accept the variation of performance with range, and preserve most of the potential performance at all ranges.