HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — The 80 vehicle pile-up on I-81 in Schuylkill County on Monday, that killed 6 people, happened during a snow squall.

The National Weather Service issued 15 snow squall warnings that day, but the abc27 Investigators have learned none of those warnings were issued in the area where the crash happened.

“There is a gap in the radar,” abc27 Meteorologist Dan Tomaso said. “The {National Weather Service} has a radar in State College, towards Washington D.C. and Philadelphia. Those beams of energy don’t quite cover the entire area in between all the radars, so there is a gap and that gap is right over a very populated area, parts of Lebanon County, Lancaster County, Eastern York, and Southeastern Dauphin County up through 81.”

abc27 Chief Meteorologist Eric Finkenbinder showed the abc27 Investigators a snapshot of the radar the day the accident happened on I-81.

“If you notice we have a snow band that is here, we can see it, but we’ve got a little bit of a void right across Schuylkill County,” Finkenbinder said.

The void is right over I-81 where the accident happened on Monday.

“There have been several instances throughout my time here where we have had things that were reported that were not detected on radar and perhaps at times did not get that warning too,” Finkenbinder said.

“Last year is a great example, there was a tornado near Myerstown. I was working that night. I never saw rotation strong enough to produce a tornado but we got a video of a tornado on the ground. That is rare for us to see a tornado on the ground that was not warned and I could not see it on radar,” Tomaso said.

“We do have radar coverage there, it’s just how high that beam is,” Jonathan Guseman said.

Guseman is a Warning Coordination Meteorologist for the National Weather Service in State College. Guseman says the issue comes down to distance, the further you get from the radar, the higher the beam.

“What we saw on Monday, the snow squalls, those are typically what we call a shallow based phenomena, so maybe 5,000 to 10,000 feet is the very top of the snow squall, so essentially the weather phenomena was all underneath that, so you simply do not see it at that point,” Guseman said.

Can the radar gap be fixed?

“I believe with a new radar in this area we would have better warnings,” said Tomaso

“In terms of putting the equipment up and deciding on that, that’s out of our scope here,” said Guseman.

Those decisions are made at the federal level. Right now there is no official plan in place to address the radar gap.