Far-seeing eye sends out early storm alerts

The dome is lowered onto the new weather radar tower on a hilltop near Kaeo. Photo/Metservice

Northlanders will have better warning of approaching storms and heavy rain once a new weather radar is fully up and running later this month.

The MetService radar has been built on a 385m-high hilltop on private farmland off Martin Rd in Kaeo.

The elevated site atop Huia Hill will allow the radar to "see" about 300km in all directions - 120km beyond the Three Kings Islands to the north, and as far as Auckland in the south.

Currently the country's northernmost weather radar, near Warkworth, only covers as far north as the Bay of Islands.

The new radar station, to be officially opened on July 28, will be the ninth in the MetService network and the last of five new radars built over the past six years for earlier and more accurate warnings of heavy rain and thunderstorms.

It will also allow Northland to be better prepared when serious storms hit in future, as happened twice in 2007.

The radar is housed in a fibreglass dome 6.7m across on top of a steel tower raising it above surrounding vegetation. It is painted dark green and cannot be seen from Kaeo's main street, though it is visible from the hospital across the valley.

MetService checked out possible sites as far north as Te Paki, near Cape Reinga, but the Kaeo site gives good coverage across Northland and into the sub-tropics.

The radar is already running and sending images to MetService's forecast room. More testing and tweaking of communications is needed before the images can be loaded onto the website's rain radar page.