DETROIT LAKES, Minn. — State Sen. Rob Kupec has sponsored a bill to fill five critical gaps in low-level radar observations in Minnesota in the first year and eight critical gaps in subsequent years.
Kupec, a DFLer from Moorhead, had a long career as a broadcast meteorologist in the Fargo-Moorhead area prior to being elected to his state Senate seat in 2022.
“As a meteorologist serving western Minnesota for over 20 years, I’ve become well-accustomed to the radar gap that exists in large parts of our state, which have inhibited our ability to accurately predict severe and dangerous weather events,” he said in a news release. “Unfortunately, these gaps have led to tragic incidents where Minnesotans have been hurt or lost their lives. Thankfully, we can take steps to fill these gaps with this legislation which will help almost 2.5 million Minnesotans get better weather forecasts and information that could save lives.”
Under the bill, SF580, Minnesota would purchase the services necessary to fill the radar gap from a national company, Climavision of Louisville, Kentucky, at a cost of $1.27 million in 2026 and $2.05 million in 2027.
The data would be shared with the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Transportation, the Pollution Control Agency, and county and local emergency management organizations and directors.
While Minnesota is served by the federal weather radar network Next Generation Weather Radar, or Nexrad, the coverage it provides is unequal, according to the Association of Minnesota Emergency Managers.
Because the Earth curves and the radar waves pretty much go in a straight line, the farther a community is from those Nexrad sites, the less accurate the storm forecast will be. That’s because when it gets far enough away, the radar basically shoots over lower-altitude storm events like tornadoes, snow squalls and thunderstorms, and doesn’t necessarily show the details needed to save lives on the ground.
While Nexrad radar works fine on big weather events, like an EF3 or bigger tornado, it can miss smaller but still dangerous tornadoes, according to the Association of Minnesota Emergency Managers.
In Kandiyohi County, for example, a volunteer firefighter was killed when high winds toppled a grain bin onto his car while he was on-duty storm-spotting in 2022. That area of the state lacked detailed weather radar coverage.
ADVERTISEMENT
Similarly, in the early hours of July 4, 2018, an EF1 tornado struck Bemidji with no warning at all.
“Bemidji is located about as far away from a radar as you can get in Minnesota, located between Duluth’s radar and the radar at Mayville, N.D., a distance of 248 miles!” says a data sheet from the Association of Minnesota Emergency Managers.
“This lack of coverage has led to significant public safety issues: The Elbow Lake-Alexandria and the Lake of the Woods region are well outside the optimal coverage zones of the Mayville, Chanhassen, Duluth and Aberdeen radars.”
The Nexrad system “does not provide complete and equitable coverage in the lower levels of the atmosphere, leaving people and property vulnerable to volatile weather that seemingly pops up out of nowhere. In many cases, people don’t even know what’s coming until they’re feeling the impacts,” according to information from Climavision posted on the AMEM website.
The radar gap is also a problem in the winter months, “when few winter weather-related cloud features are detected more than 80 miles from a radar,” AMEM says. “Most snowfall is associated with low-level clouds, often below 4,000 feet. Even heavier snowfall associated with convective snow clouds are less than 7,000 feet. It can be snowing, sometimes heavily, and radar will not detect precipitation.”
Climavision plans to install up to eight radars in the state. The first system is already online in Wendell, where the compact radar unit sits on top of the city water tower.
Climavision expects to install four more systems this year — in or near the counties of Faribault, Kandiyohi, Crow Wing and Beltrami — to complete the first phase of its state network rollout.
ADVERTISEMENT
The last three systems, as part of the second phase, will be complete by the end of 2026 in or near the counties of Roseau, Koochiching and Lake.
Each radar covers a 60-mile range, operates at all times, and can be integrated into existing dashboards for key state agencies, such as the Department of Public Safety, MnDOT, the state Department of Agriculture, and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, as well as county and city operations. The data can also be displayed as a radar mosaic on a public website.
The radar-gap bill, as well as a second Kupec-sponsored bill, SF1171 — which increases the number of state rail inspectors from six to 10 to offset possible federal railroad safety cuts — were laid over for possible inclusion in future omnibus bills.
The Trust Project
