By GvilleTX Newsroom
SAINT JO, Texas - The City of Saint Jo and Climavision plan to install a weather radar in Saint Jo, a project local officials say will give the small Montague County city and nearby North Texas areas better storm information when severe weather threatens. The plan comes in a part of North Texas where NOAA records show recent tornado and hail events in Montague and Cooke counties.
The project is tied to the Saint Jo water tower at 306 E. Howell Street. A public Instagram notice posted by Melissa McPherson, whom the Texas Municipal League lists as a Saint Jo alderperson, scheduled an August 31 preview at the site before installation. The notice also credited Debbie L. Dennis with work on the project; TML lists Dennis as Saint Jo city secretary.
TML records identify Saint Jo as a General Law Type A city in Montague County, incorporated in 1884, with fewer than 1,000 residents. The local announcement said the radar is being pursued through a City of Saint Jo partnership with Climavision and is expected to improve weather information for Saint Jo and the surrounding area.
Climavision said in March that Montague County was among the Texas radar-gap locations with a public-private partnership awaiting installation. The company says its local radars can help a county and neighboring areas as far as about 60 miles away.
NOAA records explain why closer data can matter. NCEI describes NEXRAD as the federal network of 160 high-resolution S-band Doppler weather radars run by the National Weather Service, the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Air Force. For Saint Jo's coordinates, the National Weather Service API lists the Fort Worth office code FWD and radar station KFWS. NOAA JetStream guidance says radar beams spread as they travel, which can make low-level weather features harder for distant radars to detect.
Under Climavision's public-private model, the company says communities identify structures such as water towers or rooftops, while Climavision installs, owns, operates and maintains the radar so counties do not take on infrastructure ownership costs. In Reno, in Lamar County, Climavision said a comparable radar was installed on a city water tower in August 2023, became operational that November and, in that case, was fully funded by the company.
Texas A&M describes its Climavision radar in College Station as an X-band, dual-polarization system with a roughly 60-mile three-dimensional range, along with technical specifications for beamwidth and gate spacing. That university record concerns Texas A&M's unit, not the Saint Jo site.
NOAA Storm Events records show recent local storm history behind the concern. On May 25, 2024, NOAA recorded an EF2 tornado segment in Montague County that began south of Satona and caused no reported deaths or injuries. The same storm later produced an EF3 segment in Cooke County near Prairie Point that NOAA said killed seven people, injured dozens and caused multimillion-dollar property damage. NOAA also recorded a May 2025 episode in which Montague County received most of the severe weather, with large hail in the Saint Jo area and a tornado confirmed east of Saint Jo.
NOAA's Texas climate summary says tornado activity in the state usually peaks from April through June. Nationally, NOAA NCEI said 2024 brought the second-highest confirmed U.S. tornado count on record and that severe storms made up most of the country's billion-dollar weather and climate disasters that year.
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