West Takone weather watch radar to undergo upgrade

19/05/2014

The Bureau of Meteorology will commence an upgrade of infrastructure to the West Takone weather watch radar this week.

The refurbishment includes work on the radar dome, the internal structure of the tower and the replacement of the site's backup generator.

Bureau of Meteorology Tasmania Regional Director, Mr John Bally, said the radar is an important piece of equipment for both the Bureau and the North West community.

"The upgrade of the radar infrastructure will ensure the West Takone radar can continue to service the Tasmanian community well into the future," Mr Bally said.

Mr Bally said the work requires the shutdown of the radar for up to four weeks to ensure the safety of workers.

"While some of the work is weather dependent, we expect the refurbishment will be completed by the end of June.

"During the outage, the community will still have access through the Bureau’s website to satellite images and the new Next Generation Forecast and Warning System through MetEye, a service providing forecasts out to seven days for their localities," he said.

"In order to minimise the impact on the community and specialised users, staff will work hard to ensure the radar is up and running again as soon as possible," Mr Bally said.

The Mt Koonya radar located in Hobart will not be affected by the outage.

Go to Weather radars for further information.