New Gympie weather radar opens
26th September, 2007
Federal Member for Wide Bay Warren Truss today officially opened a new state of the art weather radar at Mt Kanigan, at Gunalda, north of Gympie.Mr Truss said the switching on of the weather radar will improve the observation of storms and severe weather across the entire south east Queensland area.
“This radar will allow the monitoring of weather from Fraser Island and the Sunshine Coast as well as parts of major catchments such as the Burnett, Mary and Brisbane rivers,” Mr Truss said.
“The new radar replaces an old radar that had been operating at the site since 1977. The new radar uses the latest technology to provide clearer radar images at a higher resolution than previously possible.”
“It will provide an important boost for local weather services and will be an important tool for the general public, aviators, the rural sector, emergency services and flood managers within local councils.”
“It will also provide meteorologists with the ability to more easily detect rain bearing weather systems and to chart the movement of rain across South East Queensland,” Mr Truss said.
“Members of the public will also be able to access rainfall information from the Gympie radar using the Bureau’s website,” he said.
“The area covered by the new radar has one of the highest incidences of severe thunderstorms in Australia. Severe storms have the potential to produce large hail, damaging wind gusts, flash flooding and tornadoes — all of which have been recorded within the coverage area of the new radar.”
“The technological advances in weather observation provided by this new facility will help meteorologists to more closely monitor the development and movement of severe weather systems in south east Queensland,” Mr Truss said.
The Gympie radar is one of 15 weather watch radars funded by the Australian government under a five-year $62 million radar upgrade project.
Imagery from the Bureau’s network of weather radars is available on the Bureau of Meteorology website http://www.bom.gov.au
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