Radar fix is just a blip

Range station offline again for servicing

THE Bureau of Meteorology is working to restore a fault that has put its radar offline in Cairns for more than two days.

The weather radar failed at the weekend and was still offfline early yesterday.

A Bureau of Meteorology spokesman said the Saddle Mountain radar on the Kuranda Range was causing the fault.

The weather radar was back up and running yesterday afternoon.

“Bureau of Meteorology technicians are currently on site working to repair a mechanical fault at the Saddle Mountain Radar,” he said.

But as soon as the radar is fixed it is expected to go offline yet again.

“Later this week, the Saddle Mountain Radar will be undergoing its routine six-month maintenance,” the spokesman said.

“Over the next fortnight it’s expected to be offline for several days but will be in operation should severe weather arise.”

The radar is about 9km northwest of the city and was installed in 2014, replacing the previous radar at the same site, to give more accurate weather readings.

He said in the meantime anyone wanting to access weather maps could still see what was happening in their corner of the world without using the bureau’s weather radar.

“Radars only form one element of the bureau’s vast observation network and the public still has access to reliable weather warnings and forecasting services via the BOM website and app,” he said.

The current outage started with the weekend’s severe storms and unprecedented hail storms, which hit Cardwell, Deeral and the Atherton Tableland. On Saturday morning the radar feed went down.

The error message on the website cited “technical or equipment problems”.

A BOM spokesman said it appeared the equipment had suffered a malfunction, but was not sure what had caused it.

It was expected the feed would be back up at 5pm on Sunday but repair efforts were delayed until yesterday.

It’s not the first time the Cairns weather radar has failed after there was a technical error at the airport station in January.

An unknown error with the radar took services offline for about 24 hours.

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