Beckom Rain Radar - 50km

The Wagga Wagga radar has a very good view in most directions but trees to the north west block the view almost entirely between the north west and north north west. A low range of hills in the southern sector limit its useful range to about the Murray River. It should provide useful weather information as far west as Colleambally, north to Grenfell and east to Canberra. People in the ACT should realise that this area is near the outer limit of the radar coverage so low level weather echoes will not be detected and the radar will be unable to detect weather systems approaching Canberra from the eastern sectors. Being a "C Band" radar, if there are large thunderstorms around, the radar will not be able to detect accurately the strength of other storms located behind the closest storms. This will also lead to the underestimation of the strength, at times, of very intense isolated storms. Heavy rain over the radar itself will reduce the reliability of the radar in all directions. There is a tendency to observe small areas of false echoes within approximately 50 kilometres of the radar. These are normally easy to recognise because they are usually the lowest intensity level, very small and randomly scattered. There is a blind spot of 1 km radius centred on Wagga Wagga Airport. <a