The Kearney Gomez Doppler radar remains offline as another cold front is approaching Cayman on 5 Feb.
Kerry Powery, chief meteorologist at the Cayman Islands National Weather Service, said, “They are hoping to have the radar back up and working before this weekend.”
The outage follows a major upgrade completed by Leonardo, the original manufacturer of the weather monitoring system.
The radar was taken offline on 14 Nov. 2025. At the time, a government press release stated that critical upgrade works would be completed and the radar would be back online and operational by 31 Dec. 2025.
According to the National Weather Service, the radar was originally funded through a grant provided by the European Union in 2012 and first became operational in 2013. It had an original lifespan of 15 years, but it started to have periodic outages.
The radar was most recently repaired at the end of 2024 after suffering several other breakdowns over recent years.
When the upgrades were announced in November 2025, National Weather Service Director General John Tibbetts said, “This project is a major step forward in ensuring the reliability and accuracy of our radar system for years to come.”
The public was advised that, “The upgrade would incorporate the latest technological advancements to improve detection capabilities, data accuracy and system efficiency, as well as delivering enhanced real-time coverage during all weather events, including new rainfall measurements.”
The technical team from the radar manufacturer Leonardo was paid $662,000 dollars to come down to the Cayman Islands to upgrade the radar and towards the end of December 2025 the upgrades were completed. “Tests were conducted, and the radar was operational for about a week,” Powery said.
Days after completing the upgrades, the system broke down and it has not worked since.
After the radar broke down again, Jason Webster, deputy chief officer of policy coordination at the Cabinet Office, confirmed there is a warranty in place on the recently performed work by Leonardo.
“We decided to wait for the Leonardo technicians to determine what is causing the problem and to make the repairs, because we didn’t want to do anything to potentially void our contractual agreement and the warranty with the company,” he said.
The repairs were delayed because Leonardo technicians were off work over the Christmas holiday period and, as a result, “the work to bring the radar back online commenced on 5 January 2026”, Webster said.
Powery confirmed that the engineering team at Leonardo has remote access to the radar and is trying to identify and fix the issue remotely. “We hope they can make the repairs without having to fly the technicians back to Cayman, but, if necessary, they will do that,” he said.
Leonardo is a global aerospace, defence and security firm based in Germany.
Related Videos
It would be nice to have the time stamp in local time.
Why are we spending large amounts of money on a radar unit that’s within 2 years of it’s expiration date. In November Mr Tibbetts tells us the project is a “major step forward in ensuring the reliability of our radar system for years to come” – “read 1 month to come”. Over the years there have been regular breakdowns with long outages. Scrap it and replace it!.