WA - Halls Creek Radar Upgrade

The Bureau of Meteorology (the Bureau) is seeking to advise members of the upgrade of Halls Creek radar.

The issue

• The Halls Creek weather radar is about to undergo a significant upgrade to provide local community and industry with more reliable and up-to-date weather information. To make the changes, the radar will be offline for up to 6 weeks.
• From 29 June 2022, subject to any unforeseen delays, the Bureau of Meteorology will begin the upgrade of the Halls Creek radar which includes replacing the radar transceiver equipment. At the same time, a new radar shelter will be installed to house new equipment at the current site.
• The upgraded radar system will improve the tracking of winds, quality of rainfall images and predictions for severe storms.
• There will be no impact to the Bureau's forecasts and warnings, which are informed by observations from a range of assets including satellites, upper atmosphere monitoring and automatic weather stations. Up-to-date forecasts and warnings will continue to be published on the Bureau's website bom.gov.au and on the BOM Weather app.

Proposal

The Bureau is committed to providing an outstanding service to the Australian community. As part of this commitment, the Bureau is preparing to upgrade the Halls Creek weather radar in Western Australia to provide local community and industry with more reliable and up-to-date weather information.

From 29 June 2022, subject to any unforeseen delays, the Bureau will begin upgrade of the Halls Creek radar which includes replacing the radar transceiver equipment. At the same time, a new radar shelter will be installed to house new equipment at the current site. The Halls Creek radar will need to be offline for six weeks for our technicians to complete this work. This work has been planned to occur when thunderstorms are less likely to ensure the least disruption to the community.

There will be no impact to the Bureau's forecasts and warnings, which are informed by observations from a range of assets including satellites, upper atmosphere monitoring and automatic weather stations. Up-to-date forecasts and warnings will continue to be published on the Bureau's website bom.gov.au and on the BOM Weather app.

The Halls Creek radar is one part of a comprehensive weather observation network of more than 11,000 assets including satellites, upper atmosphere monitoring, automatic weather stations, ocean buoys and flood warning networks. During the outage period, those seeking situational awareness of rain can use a range of alternative sources:

• The Wyndham radar provides some overlapping coverage for the region and can be accessed on the Bureau's website and BOM Weather app.
• The Bureau's MetEye service provides publicly accessible images showing temperature, rain and wind information.
• The community can also access satellite images from the Himawari-8 satellite. These images are also available from the Bureau's website and show cloud cover and lightning strikes. Once the work is complete, the community, emergency services and local industry will benefit from the radars improved tracking of winds, quality of rainfall images and predictions for severe storms.

Relevant documentation