HUMBOLDT — About two weeks after the City of Humboldt and Climavision installed a weather radar station atop a water tower north of the city, it detected an EF-1 tornado that touched down near Eureka. The tornado traveled 7.5 miles in the early morning hours of April 16.
“Immediately after the radar turned on, we saw the benefits of this system,” said Tara Goode of Climavision.
Goode and Bryce Kintigh gave a brief presentation with examples of how the radar will benefit the region during a ceremony Wednesday morning. Crews finished installing the 5,000 pound weather radar station in late March.
Humboldt City Council members agreed in January to allow Climavision Operating, LLC, of Louisville, Ky., to install the dome-shaped station on the 80-foot tower. The round fiberglass structure will be accessible from the inside of the water tower.
City Administrator Cole Herder explained that he was contacted by a representative of Climavision in November 2023 expressing interest in installing the weather system. Prior to its installation, the nearest weather station was located in Wichita. The system provides local municipalities access to live radar feeds for the purpose of forecasting, public alerts and emergency preparation activities.
Herder noted that Humboldt was chosen for the weather radar over bigger cities like Chanute or Iola due to its distance from the Prairie Queen Wind Farm north of Moran. “Chanute and Iola are both closer to the wind farm, which causes noise on the radar,” he explained.
There are three privately owned radars planned for Kansas at no cost to the community. Humboldt is the first of the three, with the other two locations being near Hill City and Ellsworth.
“That means the whole state will be covered with weather radar coverage upon completion,” said Goode. She anticipates the other sites to be completed within approximately 12 months.
Climavision owns, operates and maintains all of the radars and will enter into “radar-as-a-service” contracts with government agencies and other weather-sensitive industries. Essentially, the company fronts the cost of the radar and then monetizes data access. “This allows us to pay for the technology and provide the data back to our community partners for free,” Goode said. “Offering the radar-as-a-service removes the costly infrastructure burden of owning, maintaining, and operating your own system and allows more entities to benefit from additional weather surveillance information.”
In lieu of a formal ribbon cutting, Goode and Kintigh presented Herder and Allen County Emergency Management Director Jason Trego with a Kentucky bourbon barrel sign that denotes the partnership with Climavision. “We bring a little piece of Kentucky to each site to honor that relationship,” said Goode.
