Last year we shared this story (below) with you about Climavision, a weather data company who got their start in NuLu.
Climavision is leading a change in global weather data from their headquarters in Nulu. This local startup just celebrated their first year in business by expanding their team and announcing new partnerships!
Now this local company is sharing their data with the National Mesonet Program, through which the National Weather Service can use it. Below is part of the press release they sent us (from Fleur de Lis Communications) about this new arrangement:
Since early last year, Climavision has been cooperating with NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL). Now, for the first time, the National Weather Service has entered into a short-term arrangement to access Climavision’s supplementary radar data through the National Mesonet Program (NMP). The NWS will use this opportunity to enhance research and development while further informing any decision by the agency to enter into a longer-term contracting/data-buy commitment.
The National Mesonet Program is a “network of networks,” which combines data from public and private weather sensor networks across the country, greatly expanding the amount of information accessible to the National Weather Service and its forecasters.
Climavision will provide its data to the program through a contract with Synoptic Data public benefit corporation, a subcontractor to KBR for the NMP. In 2022, Climavision, launched its commercial network of X-band radars, designed to potentially supplement the NWS’s NEXRAD radars. Climavision’s network is now live in storm-prone states such as Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, with more radars coming online every month.
Climavision’s data is an especially important contribution to the NMP because Climavision radars are specifically designed to provide low altitude coverage in areas located between NWS NEXRAD radars. NEXRAD is the cornerstone of real-time weather monitoring, but the distance between its sites still leaves some parts of the country without radar coverage nearest to the ground – exactly where damaging weather can form quickly. Climavision’s radars sit directly in these “low level radar data void areas” and provide high-resolution surveillance that increases NWS knowledge of weather conditions.
As the first commercial radar network to contribute data to the NMP, Climavision will provide NWS staff with the ability to assess this radar data for its potential viability to be used in operations. Climavision and NOAA are also working together through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) established in 2022 to evaluate Climavision’s radar data for potential use in the NOAA’s Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor (MRMS) system. This CRADA has provided scientists at the National Severe Storms Laboratory responsible for the research and development of MRMS real-time access to Climavision radar data to test within the research version of MRMS.
We use Kentucky mesonet data every day in our weather maps at WDRB. Any time you see a current temperatures map or how much rain fell in the last 24-hours (just to name a couple of examples), you are looking at mesonet data coming in from across the state. That is the network with which Climavision is working to share its radar data to NOAA.
