A Louisville company will be providing a new tool to the National Weather Service.
Since early last year, Louisville-based Climavision has been cooperating with NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL). Now, for the first time, the National Weather Service has entered into a short-term arrangement to access Climavision’s supplementary radar data through the National Mesonet Program (NMP), a news release said. The NWS will use this opportunity to enhance research and development while further informing any decision by the agency to enter into a longer-term contracting/data-buy commitment.
The National Mesonet Program (NMP) is a “network of networks,” which combines data from public and private weather sensor networks across the country, greatly expanding the amount of information accessible to the National Weather Service and its forecasters, according to the release.
In 2022, Climavision, launched its commercial network of X-band radars, designed to potentially supplement the NWS’s NEXRAD radars. Climavision’s network is now live in storm-prone states such as Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee, with more radars coming online every month.
Climavision will provide its data to the program through a contract with Synoptic Data public benefit corporation, a subcontractor for the NMP.
The company's radars are specifically designed to provide low altitude coverage in areas located between NWS NEXRAD radars. NEXRAD is the cornerstone of real-time weather monitoring, but the distance between its sites still leaves some parts of the country without radar coverage nearest to the ground — exactly where damaging weather can form quickly. Climavision’s radars sit directly in these “low level radar data void areas” and provide high-resolution surveillance that increases NWS knowledge of weather conditions.
“People who live in the gaps between NEXRAD radars are increasingly at risk as weather grows more volatile,” said Climavision CEO and Co-Founder Chris Goode in the release. “This collaboration may allow the NWS to provide a new level of warning for these communities.”
Data from the program may also serve as a critical resource to aid business leaders, policymakers and researchers in key decision making that affects every segment of the U.S. economy including the highly weather-sensitive security, transportation and energy sectors, the release said.
We last checked in with Climavision around the first of the year, when the company as the company was launching radars in the Southeastern U.S. We also noted that it landed a massive investment (or massive for this area, anyway) of $100 million in June 2021.
