(GRLevel3) International Radars

What you get

Weather Pulse carries 279 radars outside the United States alongside the US WSR-88D network: 155 across 23 European countries, 6 in France's overseas territories (Guadeloupe, Martinique, La Réunion and New Caledonia), 66 operated by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, 32 operated by Environment Canada and 20 operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency. GRLevel3 receives them as ordinary Level III products:

• super-resolution base reflectivity and velocity at every radar that measures velocity;
• correlation coefficient and differential reflectivity at about 145 dual-pol radars, including every Canadian radar, 21 Australian ones and 32 French ones;
• echo tops, VIL and rainfall;
• the storm products: storm tracks, hail, mesocyclones and tornado vortex signatures.

Each radar has a four-character ID:

• European radars start with their country's first letter: NHUR (Hurum, Norway), DESS (Essen, Germany), FTRA (Trappes, France), PRAM (Ramża, Poland). Estonia's and Spain's radars start with E: EHAR (Harku), ETJV (Madrid).
• France's overseas radars start with F, like mainland France's: FLME (Le Moule, Guadeloupe), FDMT (Le Diamant, Martinique), FCRO (Colorado) and FPVS (Piton Villers) on La Réunion, FNMA (Nouméa) and FLFU (Lifou) in New Caledonia.
• Japanese radars use the Japan Meteorological Agency's own IDs: KASH (Tokyo), SAPP (Sapporo), NAGO (Nagoya).
• Canadian radars start with C followed by the last three letters of Environment Canada's own radar code: CSWL (Woodlands, Manitoba), CSKR (King City, Ontario), CSVD (Val d'Irène, Quebec). Two differ, because their letters were already taken: Franktown, Ontario is CCSF and Exeter, Ontario is CCSE.
• Australian radars start with A followed by three letters of the radar's name: AMEL (Melbourne), ASTH (Sydney, Terrey Hills), ABMS (Brisbane, Mt Stapylton), ATHR (Townsville, Hervey Range), APSE (Perth, Serpentine).

Set these up before 24 September 2026? Most European IDs changed that day (for example EHUR became NHUR). Import the current radar file again as described below, and use the new IDs. Any sites with the old IDs that remain in your list no longer receive data.

Added 6 October 2026: the six overseas French radars, and five more in mainland France: FMAU (Mont Maurel), FMCH (Moucherotte), FCBS (Colombis), FSRM (Saint-Rémy) and FNOY (Noyal). If you imported the radar file before then, download it again, drop it again (step 1) and refresh your server (step 2) to get them.

Before you start

You need GRLevel3 3.0.1 or later. That release added support for these radars. Check your version with Help → About, and update if you are on an earlier one.

GRLevel3 then needs two things, and they are separate:

1. The radar file. GRLevel3 ships with a table of US radar positions only. A small file from us tells it where the other 279 radars are.
2. Your Weather Pulse polling server. GRLevel3 learns which radars it can download from your server, and keeps that list until it is told to fetch it again.

Step 1: Import the radar file

1. Download customradars.gis.txt. In your browser choose Save link as… and save it somewhere you will keep it, such as your Documents folder. Do not save it inside the GRLevel3 program folder, which program updates can erase.
2. Start GRLevel3 and let it finish loading.
3. Drag the downloaded file from File Explorer onto the GRLevel3 main window and let go.

The radars now appear under Site → Select. There are 279 of them, so the list is longer from now on; that is expected.

Keep the file where you saved it. GRLevel3 reads it from that location, so deleting or moving it removes the radars. When we add radars, download the new file over the old one and drop it again.

Step 2: Refresh your Weather Pulse server

1. Stop polling.
2. Choose File → Configure Polling.

3. Check that your Weather Pulse server is entered and Use this server is checked. The URL looks like this, with your own authcode in place of authcode:

   https://level3.weatherpulse.com/level3/authcode

   If it is missing, enter your Level 3 URL from the Gibson Ridge page of your account.

4. Press OK. GRLevel3 downloads the server's radar list again when you confirm this dialog. Restarting the program alone may not refresh it, so repeat this step whenever radars you expect are missing.
5. Start polling again.

Step 3: Open a radar

Choose Site → Select and pick a radar. Products appear with the radar's next update, usually within a few minutes.

How often the radars update

• Europe, apart from France: new products every 5 minutes at most sites, up to 15 minutes at some. They arrive a few minutes after the radar finishes its scan, depending on when the national service publishes.
• France, mainland and overseas: new products every 5 minutes, usually less than a minute after the radar finishes its scan.
• Canada: new products every 6 minutes, arriving 1 to 4 minutes after the radar finishes its scan.
• Australia: new products every 5 minutes at every radar, arriving shortly after the Bureau publishes the scan.
• Japan: new products every 5 minutes. The Japan Meteorological Agency publishes two scans together every 10 minutes, so the newest is about 4 minutes old when it arrives and the one before it about 9.
• Dublin: Met Éireann publishes Dublin's velocity scan every 15 minutes, separately from its 5-minute reflectivity, so velocity updates every 15 minutes. The velocity panel shows the time the velocity was actually scanned, which can be a few minutes earlier than the reflectivity beside it.

If something is missing

What is different about this radar data

• Most of the European and Japanese radars, and two thirds of Australia's, are C-band; the WSR-88D is S-band. Canada's radars, Australia's city radars (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and others), France's five Mediterranean radars (Bollène, Nîmes, Collobrières, Opoul and Aléria) and its radars in Guadeloupe, Martinique and La Réunion are S-band like the WSR-88D, so this does not apply to them. Base reflectivity and velocity are what the radar measured. The derived products, meaning rainfall, hail, VIL and echo tops, use algorithms designed around S-band, so read them with care. C-band signal weakens in heavy rain, so echoes behind a strong storm can look weaker than they are, or disappear. Five French radars (FMAU, FMCH, FCBS, FSRM and FNOY) are X-band, whose signal weakens in rain faster still.
• The data is shown as the national services publish it. Their own clutter filtering is applied and we add none. On calm evenings, ground clutter near a radar or over mountains can remain visible, and the storm products can pick it up. France is the exception: Météo-France publishes its radars without clutter filtering, so we remove ground clutter from them ourselves.
• Scan strategies differ by country. These radars show VCP 700. The number is a label, not a WSR-88D scan strategy. The tilts available are the ones the radar actually scanned, so the tilt menu differs from a US radar's.
• Japan's radars: reflectivity below about 0 dBZ is not published, so very light clear-air returns are absent. Velocity arrives already dealiased by the Japan Meteorological Agency, and the lowest velocity tilt is not included because its scan settings are not published.
• France's radars: the lowest tilts repeat every 5 minutes; the top one to three change from one scan to the next over a 15-minute cycle, so the upper tilts in the menu vary. Reflectivity and dual-pol come at half-degree, 240 m resolution, and velocity at 1 degree and 1 km. Velocity arrives already dealiased by Météo-France. Reflectivity is published in 1 dBZ steps and nothing below 0 dBZ, so very light clear-air returns are absent. Nouméa and Lifou publish no dual-pol. Differential reflectivity at Le Moule (FLME) reads about 2 to 3 dB high, from the radar's own calibration.
• Sources and attribution. European data comes from the national meteorological services through EUMETNET OPERA and the services' own open-data feeds, mostly under CC BY 4.0. French data, mainland and overseas, comes from Météo-France's radar API under Etalab's Open Licence 2.0 (Licence Ouverte). Japanese data comes from the Japan Meteorological Agency. Canadian data comes from Environment and Climate Change Canada, under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Australian data is © Commonwealth of Australia, Bureau of Meteorology.

Removing these radars

Delete or rename the customradars.gis.txt file you dropped, then restart GRLevel3.

Still stuck?

Open a ticket and tell us your GRLevel3 version (Help → About), the radar ID you tried, and whether the radar appears in Site → Select. Those three facts tell us straight away whether it is a radar file problem or a polling problem.