Ensuring their equipment was in full working order ahead of any severe summer weather was the reason given by the Bureau of Meteorology for having both the Longreach and Mount Isa weather radar stations off-air at the start of the month.

With much-anticipated storms finally beginning to build in northern parts, the loss of the ability to track the weather in large parts of western Queensland was immediately noticed.

One of those doing more than notice the lack of electronic verification was northern MP Bob Katter, who lost little time in stirring up a storm of words at the dual outage.



Wondering whether the bureaucrats who scheduled the maintenance came down in the last shower, Mr Katter said people from Blackall to Burketown were given no prior warning of the outage and were understandably furious.



"Only 12 months ago half a million livestock were lost during severe flooding from a monsoonal rain event," he said.

"Now they think it's appropriate to schedule maintenance on two vital radars during the middle of the wet season?

"We have the most volatile weather in the country, with the highest rainfall, and the government thinks it's a good idea to take our only source of data offline?

"Why wasn't this done during winter?"

The message given out by the Longreach radar during the early January outage.

A BoM spokeswoman said severe weather could happen any time of the year, agreeing that chances increased during the six months of the wet season.

"That's why it is vital any repairs are made before severe weather impacts an area, rather than attempting to repair equipment during an event," she said.

"The weather situation is dynamic and, when needed and possible, maintenance is postponed and radars brought back online ahead of severe weather."

The radar at Longreach experienced a fault in late December and was kept offline for maintenance purposes, resulting in 13 days offline in January.

At Mount Isa, the system was down for three partial days in January for maintenance purposes.

According to the bureau, the system there had a 97 per cent uptime in 2019, while the uptime for Longreach's radar last year was 94.65 per cent.

Prior to these outages, the bureau carried out scheduled maintenance at Longreach between August 20-22 last year and at Mount Isa from July 29 to August 2.

There has long been criticism of the siting of the radar station on Mornington Island, most recently by Carpentaria shire mayor Jack Bawden, who said its unreliability in cyclones and remote nature meant a site on the mainland, at either Normanton or Croydon would be preferable for Gulf residents and the water's fishing fleet.

BoM statistics show that the radar on the island had an uptime of 90 per cent in 2019.

"All radars are different and Mornington Island's unique offshore location can mean replacement parts can take longer to arrive," the spokeswoman said. "The most recent outage at Mornington Island was associated with logistics required to access the remote site."

She said that wherever possible, the bureau aimed to have maximum overlapping coverage of its 64 radars, the fourth largest radar network in the world.

"However the bureau does not have appropriation to expand its network.



"The bureau welcomes funding support from governments or other entities.



"In partnership with the bureau, several state governments have funded the installation and operation of meteorological observing equipment such as radars, including recently in Western Australia and Victoria."

It costs on average $5-6 million to install a new weather radar and a similar amount in operating costs of the life of a station.

Related: Weather on the budget radar



KAP's Bob Katter wants weather radars to be sited every 250km in regional Australia.

The federal government has committed $77.2 million towards enhanced weather monitoring in Queensland including four new weather radars and new rain gauges for the upper Burdekin region.



Two of those new radars in will cover regions including the Upper Burdekin between Charters Towers and Hughenden and the Flinders catchment near Maxwelton.

The decision came on the back of the failure of the Longreach radar from January 30 to February 5 last year, thanks to radar equipment and mains power failure at the site during the worst of the north west monsoon disaster, leaving the mid-west region almost blind to the ferocity and direction of the storm.

Mr Katter said the new radars for northern Queensland wouldn't be delivered for another two years and so the current outages weren't acceptable.

"Farmers, mining camps, ships at sea, residents and tourists all use these services to prepare and proactively manage risks," he said. "Cyclone and monsoon events can come on suddenly and every bit of information counts."