Weather radar won’t operate until September

There will naturally be plenty of second guessing regarding what the Meteorological Service could or couldn’t have done to better prepare people for the floodwaters spawned by Tropical Storm Arthur. One tool that our weather experts did not have is advanced radar. In January we covered the groundbreaking ceremony for the much anticipated installation of a Doppler Radar at the Met Office’s headquarters in Ladyville. At the time it was predicted that the equipment would be installed by June and operational by July. According to Acting Chief Meteorologist Ramon Frutos, while those dates have slipped slightly, the badly needed upgrade should be good to go in time for the end of the hurricane season.

Ramon Frutos, Acting Chief Meteorologist
“Hopefully, we should get our radar up and operational sometime in late August or early September. Maybe just before Independence Day on the twenty-first our radar will be fully operational. You know, whenever you install these electronic systems, you have to run a period of tests or a testing period for a couple weeks and that’s what will happen in August and early September. The contractors from Germany, the Selects Gematronics Engineers, will be here in August to set up the radar system and then install it up on the newly refurbished radar tower that we are constructing at the moment. Hopefully, in the next week or so, that radar tower will be completed and what will be left to do will be the interior work.”

Funding for the radar comes from an initiative implemented by the Caribbean Meteorological Organization on behalf of CARIFORUM. As part of that project, Barbados, Guyana and Trinidad will also be receiving radars. Other upgrades to Belize’s Met Office include two thousand additional square feet of space to house a library, living quarters for employees during a storm, and administrative offices.