Speaking at a meeting of Cabinet today, Councillor Stewart Young, Leader of Cumbria County Council, informed Members that the Environment Agency and the National Centre for Atmospheric Science have now deployed a weather radar system which will help better protect Cumbria in the future.
This follows a statement made to Cabinet in 2016 in which Cllr Young highlighted the need for an improved weather radar system in Cumbria.
Councillor Stewart Young said: “Following the floods in 2015, one of the things that came to light was that our agencies didn’t receive the detailed advance weather warnings that they needed to help protect our communities and businesses. It emerged that the current radar weather warning system did not provide adequate high resolution weather warning information for our area. Because of our landscape – particularly our mountains – the line of sight for our areas from the existing radar stations is restricted.
“I called on the government to invest in improved high resolution weather radar systems for Cumbria, and I’m pleased to see that they have reacted responsibly and have now deployed the improved radar system for 12 months.
“The data collected by the radar will provide evidence for the need to invest in a permanent solution and help researchers better understand the type of extreme rainfall that sometimes affects Cumbria.”
