Columbia County has partnered with Climavision, a company based in Louisville, Ky., to stay one step ahead in weather emergencies.
On Wednesday morning, at the Columbia County Local Emergency Planning Committee meeting at the Emergency Operations Center, the climate data pioneer offered a presentation to demonstrate the use of its new radar installation.
“We are here literally to fill gaps in weather surveillance,” said Tara Goode, vice president of strategic partnerships with Climavision, presenting before an audience that included several local officials and administrators, such as Judge James Blanchard and Commissioner Alison Couch.
Climavision completed installing its new weather radar system in Harlem, atop the city’s water tower, in November of last year, the latest deployment in the company’s burgeoning nationwide high-resolution network.
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The system includes a dual-polarization, X-band weather radar with a 12-foot radome, conveniently smaller than the 40-foot, high-atmosphere next-generation S-band radars (or NEXRAD) used by the National Weather Service.
This design makes it easier to fill low-level blind spots in coverage between NEXRAD radars, and provide the highest resolution view of activity on the ground, such as tornadoes or floods, equipping emergency team members and media to see and discern the direction of potentially threatening weather, often before the National Weather Service does.
Columbia County Emergency Services, Engineering, Waterworks and other departments will have online access to the system’s coverage. Though warnings and notices will continue to come through official government channels, the system will provide critical visibility to better equip Emergency Management Agency to prepare and respond to volatile weather situations.
“If you’re trying to understand how much rainfall is coming, where it’s headed and who might impact…[you] can be very strategic about where I locate my resources,” Goode said.
The EMA had long sought to install a sophisticated weather radar system installed in Columbia County
“When we asked the question of can we get our own radar here, the answer was an emphatic ‘no,’” said EMA director Shawn Granato. “If a city the size of Charlotte isn’t getting a radar, then you have no chance to get a radar.”
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It was ultimately luck, said Granato, that led to Climavision installing its system in the area, as Climavision approached the county. The ensuing partnership and Climavision’s installation of the system in Harlem came at no cost to the county.
“Climavision just came along because they did their due diligence, finding all the different gaps in the country,” he said, noting that the area was high on the weather tech company’s list because of its location between the major weather areas of Columbia and Atlanta. “We’re in that pit where they can’t see the weather that we have at 1,000 feet and below; and that’s where all the tornadoes happen, that’s where all the storms happen. So they sought us out.”
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
