A private weather technology company is in the process of installing four new weather radars across the state, which are expected to significantly improve coverage gaps in NOAA’s Doppler radar network.
According to Climavision, the company plans to place radars in Fort Myers, outside of Ocala, in Dixie County and in the southeast region of the state near Palm Beach County.
The National Weather Service currently operates long-range Doppler radars in Key West, Miami, Tampa, Melbourne, Jacksonville, Tallahassee and Eglin Air Force Base in the Panhandle, but because the WSR-88D sites have a maximum range of 200 to 300 miles, some communities are left without significant coverage.
When meteorologists are unable to see in the lower regions of the atmosphere, it can impact the ability to detect everything from scattered showers to rotation in thunderstorms.
According to NOAA, some of the more significant radar coverage gaps in the state exist along the Florida Big Bend, North-Central Florida and south of Fort Myers along the Southwest Coast.
Due to these blind spots, numerous tornadoes have gone without warnings, including at least half a dozen twisters since 2020 in Marion County and an EF-2 in Lee County in 2022.
Climavision says its radars only have a scope of about 60 miles but are usually placed near what have been previously described as ‘Doppler dead zones’, which can help forecasters.
“…additional radar coverage is always helpful. The Lee County Emergency Management team has kept us updated with this project, but Climavision is a private company. Their radar is an X-band that has its own limitations especially with attenuation,” said Jennifer Hubbard, a warning coordination meteorologist with the NWS office in Tampa, stated.
A radar system doesn’t come cheap, and while the company doesn’t publicly disclose the exact price, each installation can run around $1 million - a cost that is largely absorbed by private entities and not taxpayers.
“We are an integrated partner of NOAA and NWS and our data is being used in over 30 weather forecasting offices across the country where we have live radars online now. We expect access to scale as our network scales,” said Tara Leigh Goode, vice president of strategic partnerships & radar operations at Climavision.
The Fort Myers site atop the Lee County Public Safety Center is the first in the Sunshine State and the thirtieth across the nation, with the majority located in the Southeast.
The company says it is working to get the Florida sites up and running by the first half of 2026.
