JEFFERSONVILLE, Ga. — On Sunday afternoon, strong storms and tornadoes ripped through Central Georgia.
Usually, our 13WMAZ meteorologists use the National Weather Service radar in Jeffersonville, located on Highway 96 in Twiggs County, to track storms.
But on Sunday, that radar was out of commission.
Meteorologists Ben Jones, Courteney Jacobazzi and Hunter Williams used the radars in Atlanta and Valdosta to forecast what was going on in our Central Georgia viewing area.
Ben says the Jeffersonville radar has been working off and on over the past few weeks, and this isn’t the first time it’s gone offline.
Back in 2017, we reported that radar went down after 41 tornadoes crossed through Georgia in two days.
Maintenance crews from Robins Air Force Base were dispatched to fix it then.
"It was the perfect storm," technician George Pacheco told 13 WMAZ in 2017. "It's labor intensive. It does require three to four technicians."
But on Monday, 13WMAZ did not see any crews at the radar working to fix it.
Monday afternoon, RAFB sent out a press release saying maintenance crews have actually put in over 200 hours of work trying fixing the radar since February 11th.
They’ve replaced at least eight parts inside the radar, which cost over $32,000.
RAFB says they're still working with the National Weather Service and radar engineers to try and diagnose the problem.
The release from RAFB also says the radar in Jeffersonville has been one of the best maintained sites across the United States Air Force.
Over the past year, RAFB personnel have maintained a 99.5-percent or higher operational status, which is the highest across all 25 Department of Defense sites around the world.