An area weather radar station that has been experiencing an unscheduled outage is expected to return to service by Friday.
The weather radar at Montreal River has been offline since Jan. 10. It is one of 33 such radar stations dotted across the country and the data it collects includes conditions for Sault Ste. Marie and surrounding area..
"Since the outage, Environment and Climate Change Canada technicians have made an initial repair attempt, which was unsuccessful," said Eleni Armenakis, senior communications advisor for the ministry.
"The issue has been identified as affecting key components of the radar, and replacement parts have been dispatched from our spare parts depot in Toronto. ECCC technicians will return to the site on Tuesday, January 21, to work on the repairs," she added.
Those repairs are expected to be completed by Friday.
Meteorologists continue to monitor the weather over the area by utilizing data from a number of other sources, including: neighbouring radars, web cams, road reports, satellite, model data and citizen reports.
"The overlapping coverage design of our radar network allows for continued service despite the outage. In the Sault Ste. Marie area, radar coverage is supplemented by data from nearby radars located in Smooth Rock Falls, Britt, and Shuniah in Ontario, as well as Gaylord in Michigan," said Armenakis.