The majority of the Gunnedah district and beyond has been in the dark since the Namoi radar dropped out of action on Tuesday.

The impact is far reaching as radar coverage extends north across Moree, northeast over Inverell and Guyra, east to Armidale, southeast to Scone and the Upper Hunter, south to Mudgee, southwest towards Dubbo and Gilgandra, west to Coonamble.

On Wednesday, visitors who tried to click on the Namoi radar via the Bureau of Meteorology’s website were informed the service was unavailable for 12 hours.

By Thursday that time was revised to 72 hours.

So what happened?

A Bureau spokeswoman said technicians visited the site and identified two parts that needed replacement.

The high voltage power supply was replaced earlier this week, however a further issue was identified with the digital data converter.

The converter was due to be replaced on Friday and radar is expected to be up and running later in the day.

Although many in the community look to the radar for weather information, fortunately BOM has a number more resources available to keep us informed with up to date weather warnings.

“The Bureau’s warnings and weather forecast services will continue as normal,” the spokeswoman said.

“These are prepared using a combination of many different sources of information and advanced weather forecasting systems and are not dependent on any single observation source. 

“Radars are only one source, others include satellites, automatic weather stations and upper-air observations collected using weather balloons and information from aircraft.”

So rest assured, just because the radar is down, it doesn’t mean we’re completely in the dark about our approaching weather systems.