National Weather Service radar outage expected to last one to two weeks

Monday marked the beginning of a one-to-two-week period when the National Weather Service (NWS) in Davenport will forecast weather without its normal radar system.

Major maintenance work on the weather station’s radar system is the reason for the outage, because the radar dish inside the giant white radar dome, along with the pedestal the dish rotates on, is being refurbished. Meteorologists at Davenport’s NWS station say the current dish, pedestal, and other equipment inside the dome was installed 28 years ago. However, they say the approximate life span for the equipment is usually 20 to 25 years.

“The radar and the pedestal it sits on have been spinning pretty much all the time since 1994,” said Rich Kinney, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Davenport. “It’s already exceeded its predicted lifespan, so we have to take this necessary step.”

The work is being done through a national program called the “Service Life Extension Program”, which will eventually address each of the roughly 120 radar systems across the country. However, with that many radar systems to tend to, it brings up an issue of when each station will get the attention they need. For Davenport, while this is work that should be done now, it lands in the middle of severe storm season, one of the most important times of year for radar. While they know that’s true, Davenport NWS meteorologists say there’s not much they can do about the timing of the repairs.

“You could imagine with 120 sites, some sites, unfortunately, are going to have to go through this process during times of year that are more active weather-wise,” Kinney said.

But not to worry: NWS Davenport has a plan in the meantime. The station will receive Quad Cities radar information from other stations in nearby cities during the outage. Meteorologists say it’s a good temporary fix, but slightly less accurate information because the other station’s radar systems are further away.

“We’ll be getting data from Chicago and Milwaukee and La Crosse and Des Moines and St. Louis and Kansas City and Lincoln and on and on,” Kinney said.

Meteorologists say the upgrades to the radar system will extend their lifespan by a few decades. They say the amount of time it takes to make the repairs, ironically, depends on the weather. For example, working up high on the dome is not safe on days where wind speeds are more than 18 miles per hour.