Southwest Colorado pulls out of a weather ‘black hole’ with new radar

DURANGO, Colo. — There are three National Weather Service radars that reach southwest Colorado — one in Grand Junction, one in Pueblo, and another in Albuquerque, N.M., but they are all partially blocked by mountain ranges.

The closest radar beam in Grand Junction has to be pointed up at an angle to clear the mountains, which means there’s about 28,000 feet of the sky that’s completely invisible to meteorologists.

The dangers of living in a weather black hole became very evident to that community in 2018 during the 416 fire and the flash floods that followed.

“It really drove home the need for a permanent weather radar station that helps fill in the gap of the larger radar towers,” said Megan Graham, the strategic management director with La Plata County.

She’s led the charge ever since to pull southwest Colorado out of the shadows, and this October it finally happened.

The county built their own weather radar that will shed new detail on storms within a 150-mile radius, looking over the city of Durango, the 56,000 residents of La Plata County and the rest of the Four Corners region.

“We really see it as a massive public safety boost for fire, winter storms, flooding, all of those things that can have a significant impact on community safety.” said Graham.

The radar data is available to the public for free on the web and on smartphone apps. Check the radar out on the La Plata County website. You can also download the iOS iPhone app for free. La Plata County said they are working on developing an app for Android and hope to have that available soon.

You will notice what’s known as radar clutter on the app and on the website radar image. That’s just part of having a radar close to mountains. The radar beam reflects off of the terrain and returns a signal similar to precipitation. Not all clutter can be programed out of the software, but real storms will still appear despite the terrain clutter.