Communication Issue Shuts Down Jackson Radar

Jackson’s weather was delivered courtesy of an Ohio forecast center after a communication issue caused the National Weather Service’s radar to shut down.

The National Weather Service (NWS) announced at approximately 8:00 a.m. on Monday, June 9, that its radar was “currently down due to a communications failure.”  The NWS spokesperson said the National Weather Service Office in Wilmington, Ohio, was “backing up the office” at Jackson.

Repair crews worked to assess the issue, but no timeline for restoration was announced.

The official announcement indicated that the issue was not a problem with the radar itself, but an issue with the “availability of radar data.”  The Weather Service insisted that the radar was “working fine,” but could not estimate when the data would again be accessible.

For many in the thirty-three counties in eastern Kentucky served by the office, the outage came at a bad time.  Forecasters had predicted the possibility of a slight risk of severe weather associated with a storm front expected to drop into the Ohio River Valley.

The outage comes as concerns mount due to recent Trump Administration cuts to the National Weather Service.  According to one report, the Jackson Weather Office, located at the Julian Carroll Airport, is operating on a reduced staff.  Reports indicate that during periods when no severe weather is expected, there is only one staff member during the evening hours and none overnight.

As the outage continued, a NWS spokesman shared an access link to the radar data about 3:30 p.m. on Monday with the public through its website.  

No announcement had been made about the restoration of access to the radar data at press time.