Weather radar expected for summer of 2026
The region’s long-awaited new weather radar is expected to be running in the summer of 2026, and likely to be located in Nelson.
At a Tasman District Council committee meeting on Wednesday, Environmental manager data and monitoring Mike Ede said it was a shame it had taken two devastating flood events before a radar was installed in the region.
However, once it was in operation, the radar would give far more detailed, accurate and timely information, he said.
Currently, during flood events the council received six hourly updates, but with the radar, they would be able to see what was happening between 50 rainfall sites on an hourly basis.
“That will give us a really good understanding of what’s coming,” Ede said.
The best sites for the radar were those in the area of the Nelson City Council, which gave a better view of what was happening in Tasman, he told councillors.
According to a council report, MetService initiated the procurement in August and was working at pace to deliver the radar.
What could be the most lengthy part of the project – securing the site – was expected to take 12 months, Site investigations were finished in August with input from the council.
The weather radar unit system was to be built to order by the manufacturer in Europe and then shipped to New Zealand via airfreight, with delivery forecast around October 2026.
Onsite construction for the radar would take two months, while commissioning of the radar was expected during the summer of 2026 “with a moderate degree of confidence, noting that securing a site is the biggest timeline risk”.
Another flood-related report to the committee found that two Tasman stopbank schemes provide protection for a less than one in 10 year flood (Riuwaka and Brooklyn), and three for a one in 50 year event (Peach Island, Waimea and Motueka).
Team leader rivers and coastal structures David Arseneau said it was important to keep the stopbanks’ risk profile “continually … front of mind”, and that standard best practice would be a 1% annual exceedance probability (AEP) or a one in 100 year occurrence level.
Peach Island’s west side stopbanks overtopped during both events and sustained scour damage, and a 550m section was expected to be repaired and refurbished by the end of this year.
Brooklyn River’s stopbanks from Anderson Rd to Motueka River West Bank Rd were also to be repaired along both sides, an approximate 2000m stretch, finishing in the first half of 2026.
An estimated $45m of insured river assets were damaged in the floods, Arseneau said. However, the council could choose not to repair some assets, and the recovery team was looking at the economics of rural river resilience.
“Focusing on stopbanks protecting towns is quite easy because you have hundreds of houses and businesses and billions of dollars’ worth of property, but over widespread rural farming areas, it’s a bit of a different picture,” he said.
“You can’t just focus on protecting this one farm or that farm because the money doesn’t stack up.”
Instead the team was looking at what contribution the rural rivers provided for the regional economy in terms of jobs and GDP.
Staff had put together a list of the most urgent high priority work which would take nine to 12 months, but it would “take years to get everywhere”.
“It’s important to say that the work that we’ve been doing so far is probably the equivalent of slathering the plaster over the cracked drywall.
“It’s the really rough fix, putting the rivers back kind of roughly into a corridor, but it is by no means done.”
Arseneau said there was still work to do in rock and willow restoration and making sure the rivers looked like rivers, as they appeared “a bit industrial” at present.
A “big gravel lined channel” was definitely not the end goal.
“It’s the initial step to get it back into a manageable corridor … a 100 year flood plus flow twice in the Wai-iti is not something you can recover from very quickly.”
The vast majority of damage during the floods was in the non-stopbanked rural river areas of the Motueka, Wai-iti, Dove and Motueka catchments, Arseneau’s report noted.
By Warren Gamble, Nelson Mail
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