Townsville weather radar upgrade

The Bureau of Meteorology is upgrading the Townsville weather radar. A small section of radar coverage will be unavailable from 14 March 2024.

Purpose

The Townsville replacement radar outages have now been rescheduled, following the initial outage being postponed due to severe weather.

From 14 March 2024, a small section of the radar beam will be switched off to the north-west and will be unavailable on the Bureau's website and BOM Weather app. We are replacing the Townsville weather radar with modern and reliable dual-polarised Doppler radar technology.

During the installation of the new radar, the old Townsville radar will be switched off from 4:30 am to 8:00 pm AEST during the following periods:

• 16 to 20 March 2024
• April to May 2024 (to be confirmed).

We expect to complete the upgrade by mid-2024, subject to any unforeseen delays. In the event of severe weather, construction will stop and the old radar will be temporarily returned to service.

While these works are underway there will be no impact to the Bureau's aviation forecasts and warnings. Forecasts and warnings are informed by observations from a range of assets including satellites, upper atmosphere monitoring and automatic weather stations.

More information can be found in the 'Townsville weather radar upgrade' factsheet below.

Relevant documentation