The FAA has activated 10 additional weather camera sites in Colorado, expanding weather radar coverage in the Centennial State. All but one are installed at airports in mountainous regions of the state where the terrain can prove hazardous to pilots, according to FAA officials.
The cameras, along with weather data from the equipment, give pilots critical pre-flight information, such as weather trends and from which direction bad weather is approaching.
Using this information, pilots can wait out bad weather for better flying conditions, reducing the chances of accidents, FAA officials say.
The FAA Weather Camera Program is working with transportation departments in four states to install cameras and integrate live images onto the FAA weather camera website.
As part of the program, the FAA provides consultation to the state transportation departments on engineering, design, and installation concepts to help them deploy their weather camera systems and avoid costly mistakes or design problems, agency officials note.
The new Colorado weather cameras were installed at airports in Aspen, Durango, Eagle, Gunnison, Hayden, Leadville, Limon, Rifle, Telluride and Walden. They add to the existing 13 weather camera systems installed in the state’s mountain ranges, which were activated last summer. Live images from all of the cameras are now available on the FAA’s weather camera site.
“They’re incredibly important,” said David Ulane, director of aeronautics in the Colorado Department of Transportation. “They’re one more piece of amazing information that pilots can use to make smart pre-flight decisions.”
Within the next two years, Ulane hopes to see as many as 40 more weather camera systems installed at every public-use airport in Colorado equipped with certified surface weather observation stations.
Montana, meanwhile, becomes the latest state to begin a pilot program to test weather camera capabilities, joining Alaska, Hawaii, and Colorado. Montana’s Aeronautics Division has installed two systems at airports at Lincoln and Seely Lake.
“It’s definitely a program that we’ve made a priority,” said Marc McKee, Airport and Airways Bureau chief in the Aeronautics Division. “It’s sort of a no brainer for us.”
McKee said his bureau hopes to add as many as four new locations in Montana by year’s end.