Issued: Tuesday, 30 August 2022
The Serpentine weather radar, south of Perth, is being replaced with a new radar to provide local community and industry with more reliable and up-to-date weather information as part of the Bureau of Meteorology's comprehensive observation network upgrade program.
From 29 August 2022, subject to any unforeseen delays, the Bureau of Meteorology will complete the second phase of the works to replace the radar. The old radar will be switched off for approximately 8 to 12 weeks to allow the new tower and radome to be installed.
Once complete, the community, emergency services and local industry will benefit from dual-polarised Doppler radar technology, one of the best tools for observing real-time rainfall and wind conditions across large areas.
During the outage, there will be no impact to the Bureau's forecasts and warnings, which are informed by observations from a range of assets including satellites, upper atmosphere monitoring and automatic weather stations.
Up-to-date forecasts and warnings will continue to be published on the Bureau's website bom.gov.au and on the BOM Weather app.
During the outage period, those seeking situational awareness of rain can use a range of alternative sources.
- The recently upgraded Perth Airport radar will be available on the Bureau's website, this data will also be automatically visible on the BOM Weather app.
- The Bureau's MetEye service provides publicly accessible images showing temperature, rain and wind information.
- The community can also access satellite images from the Himawari-8 satellite. These images are available from the Bureau's website and show cloud cover and lightning strikes.
The Perth (Serpentine) radar upgrade is one part of a comprehensive weather observation network of more than 11,000 assets including satellites, upper atmosphere monitoring, automatic weather stations, ocean buoys and flood warning networks.
