Burlington National Service Radar Won't Be Working Much Of This Week

 A head's up:

A National Weather Service radar image, I used this 
one from Fargo, North Dakota because there were
no rainstorms to show on the NWS local radar,
The NWS radar from the Burlington office will
be down most of this week for repairs, 

If you're used to checking out the National Weather Service Burlington web page, note the weather radar won't be up and running  most of this week. 

So during this time, you won't be able to see the location and direction of any rain or storms that develop in the area.  

You'll have to find alternative weather radar images during that time.  

The National Weather Service radar is down because they need to repair the radar dome in Colchester. The radar that services Albany, New York will also be turned off for repairs. 

The radar installations look like giant white balls atop a tower.

 Strong winds and temperature extremes over time damage some of the panels on these radar structures, so the panels have to be be replaced.  Those pieces can crack, or develop leaks, or even fall apart.

Damaged panels interfere with radar's ability to receive and transmit information, according to the National Weather Service. 

So the repairs are needed. The radar serving northern and central Vermont and northeastern New York will be down starting today. It should be up and running again sometime Thursday. 

While the repairs are  happening, showers and thunderstorms are forecast Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday around the area.

A few of the showers and storms could have fairly heavy rain Wednesday. Depending on cloud cover and other factors, we could have a few strong storms and spots of torrential rain Thursday as well. 

Given that,  let's find those alternative ways to find weather radar to keep an eye on any storms that may or may not be headed your way while the National Weather Service fixes their radar. 

Television station WPTZ's radar is quite interactive, which is nice. If you click the "layers" button on the lower right, you have options of seeing what current temperatures, dew point and wind speeds are like, along with  rainfall amounts in the past 24 hours and other information. 

The radar for television station WCAX-TV is set up in a very similar fashion to WPTZ and is just as good. 

The WVNY radar doesn't seem quite as interactive, but does cover a wide area, which is good. 

Of course the big dawgs like The Weather Channel and AccuWeather have weather radar you can use, too. 

All of these radar options are good, but I'll be happy to get the National Weather Service radar back. Only because that's the one I'm used to, I guess.

I wouldn't really recommend downloading a weather app onto your phone, as some of them seem a little dubious to me.