Kalgoorlie weather radar upgrade

07/03/2014

The Bureau of Meteorology will commence an upgrade of the Kalgoorlie weather radar this week (commencing Saturday, 8 March).

A new radar is being constructed immediately adjacent to the current radar.

Bureau of Meteorology Western Australia Regional Director, Mr Mike Bergin, said the upgrade would benefit the Kalgoorlie and wider Goldfields region.

“The upgrade of the Kalgoorlie radar ensures a continuation of radar services for the Goldfields community well into the future,” Mr Bergin said.

“The new radar will offer continuous radar imagery where previously radar imagery was unavailable for two hours each day due to the tracking of weather balloons in the upper atmosphere.”

While construction and testing of the new radar takes place, the Kalgoorlie radar will be unavailable for approximately six weeks. The service is expected to be returned by mid-April.

Mr Bergin said members of the community rely on the radar coverage, however the construction of the new radar requires the existing radar to be turned off so construction and testing can be completed.

“During the outage, the community will still have access 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 are working hard to ensure the new radar is up and running again as soon as possible.”

No other radars in Western Australia will be affected by the outage.

Go to Weather radars for further information.