Radar and lightning detection

Four weather radars are currently operational in Belgium. The Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium owns and operates two radars: the Wideumont radar in the south of Belgium (operational since 2001, renewed in 2022) and the radar in Jabbeke (operational since 2012) located near the coast. A third weather radar is located at the airport in Zaventem near Brussels and has been operated by Skeyes (Air Traffic Safety) since 2013. The fourth radar was installed in 2016 in Houthalen-Helchteren by VMM (Vlaamse Milieumaatschappij - Flanders Environment Agency).

The four radars operate in the C-band. The RMI and the VMM radars are all dual-polarization radars. In Zaventem, a new dual-polarization is foreseen in the near future.

The map below shows the locations of the Belgian radars. The dark grey areas indicate the 100-km ranges at which the radars can generally provide quantitative precipitation measurements. The light grey areas show the full radar coverage.

More than 200 weather radars are operational in Europe. Most of them are integrated in the European network of operational weather radars established in the framework of the Eumetnet/OPERA program. The OPERA Data Center collects the data from all these radars and produces a European radar composite every 15 minutes with a spatial resolution of 2 km.