Switzerland’s weather radar network is being asked to do more with less

Switzerland likes to think of itself as a country that prepares for the worst. Yet even here, the machinery behind storm warnings is being told to tighten its belt. MeteoSwiss says federal budget cuts planned for 2027 could delay the modernisation of its weather radar network, with consequences that are not exactly academic when thunderclouds, torrential rain and hail are gathering over the Alps.

The network consists of five radar stations spread across the country. They scan the atmosphere every five minutes and feed the forecasts and warnings that people tend to notice only when they fail. According to MeteoSwiss director Stefan Uhlenbrook, the federal administration has already absorbed cuts of seven to eight percent in recent years, and his office will also have to save more in 2027. For a service that must operate every hour of every day, he argues, each percentage point hurts more than in a normal office where the lights can simply be turned off at five.

The problem is not just accounting arithmetic, which is always presented as if it were a virtue in itself. The real issue is age. Radar systems last around 15 to 20 years, and several of MeteoSwiss’s installations have already reached that limit. If one radar fails, the network can still compensate. If two go down, the ability to predict extreme events precisely and locally drops sharply. That is the sort of detail that matters when the weather turns violent and the public expects warnings that are both timely and accurate.

Because of the savings plan, the renewal of the radars has been postponed. That raises the risk not only of less precise forecasts, but also of data losses. The radar information flows into weather models, into public information tools and into the warning system itself. In other words, this is not some decorative scientific gadget sitting in a federal basement. It is part of the country’s safety infrastructure.

Uhlenbrook says Switzerland still has an excellent system by international standards. He is right, but that is hardly a reason for complacency. Good systems decay quietly when maintenance is delayed and modernisation is treated as optional. MeteoSwiss says it needs more powerful observation systems, better cooperation along the warning chain and the introduction of Cell Broadcast, so that alerts can reach the whole population via mobile phones. Sensible enough. The question is whether the federal budget will allow a service built for prevention to remain ahead of the next storm, or whether the state prefers to discover the cost of thrift after the hail has already fallen.

Written by Thomas Nussbaumer thomas.nussbaumer@alpineweekly.com