MADISON, Wisconsin — A private Kentucky-based company is working to improve monitoring of rain, tornadoes and everything in between, and is bringing this new technology to parts of Wisconsin.
Climavision began rolling out what it calls high-resolution radar earlier this year, and plans to install the new equipment in parts of the western and northwestern regions of the state in 2024.
Weather industry veteran and company CEO Chris Goode said he founded Climavision in part to go where the 160 National Weather Services radars across the country don’t go, to lower parts of the atmosphere.
“It’s a great network, but it still has what we would call blind spots or gaps,” Goode said. “Those blind spots often include weather, which is very influential and can affect our daily lives.”
He said those impacts could come in the form of severe weather or milder weather like light snowfall, which can affect things like planes flying through lower levels and suffering from frigid conditions.
For their part, officials from the National Weather Service admit that there are some areas without very good radar coverage, but they also said there is no real cause for concern, especially when spotters are in the area.
Michael Kurz works as a warning coordinating meteorologist for the NWS La Crosse office. He said these gaps between their radar don’t pose a statistically significant threat to their ability to issue alerts to protect life and property.
Kurz also said that regardless of the technology, there will always be some limitations, so their spotters will remain necessary.
“The human eye is irreplaceable,” he said. “Just for allowing us to observe what’s going on and giving us that basic truth information that technology can’t always provide.”
Still, Goode said Climavision’s dual polarity radar goes a step further. By emitting energy in both the X and Y axes, their technology has the ability to make new observations through radar.
“You can actually tell the type of hydrometer that’s falling, whether it’s rain, sleet, or snow,” he explained. “Or maybe something that doesn’t occur naturally in the atmosphere, which would then indicate a tornado that’s on the ground, such as tree branches or other debris.”
Goode also said their technology has implications beyond emergency management, but may also prove useful in the transportation industry, agriculture and the new energy market. He said because the sun, wind and hydrology depend on the weather, he views their data on these resources as an investment in the future.
Climavision has so far installed five of the 200 planned units in the south of the country. Access to the data will be available through a subscription.
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