A Louisville weather-tech company that offers Radar-as-a-Service and weather forecasting has made another large investment in the commonwealth.
Climavision recently announced the installation of a second radar in Kentucky — and the 24th in its network. The radar is located in Dry Ridge, situated along Interstate 75 in Grant County between the Cincinnati metro area and Lexington, according to a news release.
The new radar will help address a “critical low-level coverage cap,” per the release, that exists along the corridors of I-75 and I-71 that form the what has been along known as the “Golden Triangle” that connects Louisville, Lexington and Northern Kentucky. Climavision’s first radar in Kentucky — located in Jamestown, 75 miles southwest of Lexington — came online in October.
“The I-75 corridor is a crucial components of the country’s supply chain,” said Climavision CEO and co-founder Chris Goode in the release. “Our solution is strategically placed to protect interstate commerce and hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians who call this region of the Bluegrass home.”
The National Weather Service (NWS) has been using what is known as Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) S-band radars. The technology, which has been used by NWS since the ’90s, can have low-level data voids as weather systems move further from the radar location. This can leave lower atmosphere weather occurrences — flash flooding, tornadoes and sleet, to name a few — largely undetected.
Climavision’s radar uses X-band, which produces smaller wavelengths than S-band and, in turn, has a higher level of sensitivity. According to the release, the radar “is designed specifically to fill these gaps to provide the highest resolution view of what’s happening nearest to the ground.”
“It’s a big day here in Dry Ridge because we can officially say that we filled in all of the blind spots as it related to weather radar surveillance here in the state of Kentucky. It's a big moment for us because now ... we have radars completely covering what has been a historical blind spot in the existing government network,” Goode said in a statement.
According to the release, both commercial weather forecasters and emergency officials can use the technology to both plan/prepare and react to large weather disturbances. Furthermore, the NWS has previously gained access to data from Climavision’s other sites through a contract signed as part of the National Mesonet Program in the summer, as we reported on back in September.
That arrangement allows many weather forecasting offices to gain access to the more than a dozen Climavision systems to forecast and help plan for emergencies.
“People who live in the gaps between NEXRAD radars are increasingly at risk as weather grows more volatile,” Goode said at the time, in a separate release. “This collaboration may allow the NWS to provide a new level of warning for these communities.”
It was nearly a year ago to the date that I sat down and spoke with Goode about his company, which placed No. 2 on Louisville Business First's Best Places to Work in 2023 for companies with 10-24 employees. Back then, Climavision had just launched six radars in the Southeast U.S. — and had plans to have a total of 35 unveiled by the end of 2023.
Goode would not disclose revenue figures with me back then, but he did say that his company generated several millions of dollars in revenue in 2022 and expected “significant growth in 2023 as these radars come online.”
In 2021, Climavision received $100 million investment from The Rise Fund, which has $18 billion in assets under management in companies across the globe, according to its website.
