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Edmonton has become the first Canadian city to buy its own mini weather radar station, hoping the high-tech equipment will minimize damage from severe rain storms before the pipes back up and manholes blow.

The egg-shaped canister is already installed on a rooftop in northwest Edmonton. It’s scanning the skies for 32 kilometres in every direction and will give city engineers far more and better quality data on each storm than they could get from Environment Canada or a rain gauge.

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“For us, this is high-definition rainfall data,” said Steven Chan, senior hydraulic engineer with the city’s drainage department.

It won’t let them predict the storms. But will let them predict how different types of storms will affect the capacity of underground pipes underground. The radar data will feed into a computer model that will predict effects and immediately send instructions to the main control room.