Radar a weather win for region

If there is a topic that dominates most everyday conversations it surely be – the weather.

We can’t help ourselves; we use the prospect of rain, heat, cold, wind and just about everything involving the weather as a conversation tool.

It can be a conversation ice-breaker, pregnant-pause destroyer or benign subject-changer because what’s happening in the weather tends to be of interest to everyone.

But having a clear understanding about what approaching weather is bringing with it can be much more than simple conversation fodder.

In the Wimmera-mallee, the weather is intrinsically tied to regional socio-economic health and vitality, be it for agricultural prosperity, safety or community management.

We are, have always been and will always be vulnerable to the vagaries of climate and weather and any way that we can stay ahead of the game is a bonus.

That’s why confirmation that a multi-million-dollar real-time weather radar station will soon be operating in the region means so much.

For those who don’t realise it, despite all the modern sophistication involved in collection of Australian weather data, the Wimmera sits in a ‘real-time’ black hole between Mildura and Mt Gambier radar services.

To now be able to accurately predict when rain will arrive or a storm front will hit parts of our region represents a massive win for broadacre farming and emergency-management planning. This is a great example of being ‘ahead of the game’.

Estimates are that having real-time information at our fingertips, courtesy of the Rainbow radar, will be worth millions of dollars every year to our agricultural industry. It represents the difference making or saving money in farm management.

But imagine what it will also mean when we have to prepare for floods, fires and other landscape-scale issues.

The Rainbow radar is a win for the region and also Wimmera Development Association, which has driven the project from the start.