I love weather of all types, all the way up to space weather.
Severe storm tracking is a blast, and I've spent many hours over the last five or six years learning what I can about how to identify and track tornadoes and such.
Without going into excessive detail on wind shear and such, below you'll see some screen shots of severe weather and what exactly you're looking at. There are plenty of good weather radar apps out there, but I recommend RadarScope. It's consistently the best!
Let's dive in:
First up, is Super Res Reflectivity. This is what commonly forms the radar you see on TV.
The radar shoots out from a set point, and the echo that comes back forms the image below. Denser material (hail, large rain drops, etc) form pinks and purples, all the way down to green, which is very light rain.
One note, is that you can adjust your settings from Tilt 1 to Tilt 4. This adjusts the distance off the ground, and the angle, the radar is beaming from. Tilt 1 gives you the greatest distance because it's shooting as close to the ground as possible. Tilt 4 is shooting up higher, so you may get a bit more accuracy from the radar but much less distance. The beam eventually ends up in space, and is no help at all on ground level.
Many times, you're looking for a "hook" on the end of the radar image. However, it is very common that you will NOT see a distinct hook with a tornado on the ground. Which leads to the next function: SuperRes Velocity.
The single most helpful radar function to use in identifying sever storms with rotation is SuperRes Velocity. This gives you the velocity of the winds in relation to the radar itself. Consider the image below... red is moving toward the radar while green is moving away. Typically speaking, the brighter the colors the stronger the winds.
There's a large tornado in this image. Easy to identify for sure! It's where the red and green appear to be circling each other, indicating that the winds relative to the radar are going in opposite directions.
Now, one thing to be aware of - you'll get false positives. The further the rotation is from the radar, the less likely the tornado is actually on the ground. The radar, a 75 miles away, is shooting up into the clouds.
This will guarantee that there is indeed rotation, but it may not be making it to the ground. Heads up, though, if something like this is coming your way!
Again, the brighter the color, the greater the intensity.
These are both from the Moore, OK tornado a few years back. The first image is a handy side-by-side.
This is what that tornado looked like on the ground, as an F5. Not much left after that one.
So, if you see rotation, and the reflectivity model shows a hook, is there a tornado for sure? No, but it's likely. It could very well be cloud-level rotation that could easily create a ground-level tornado and you SHOULD be taking cover, but it's not certain that there is actually one on the ground.
That's where differential reflectivity comes in.
With this feature, different reflectivity from the surrounding areas indicates a ball of debris in the air, where it shouldn't be. This is only used to confirm a tornado on the ground, not to originally find it.
Correlation coefficient also helps to identify items that "shouldn't" be in the air. See the two images below, taken during the Hurricane Harvey spin-off tornado outbreak. See the mixing of color? That means you've got a problem!
Another way you can identify severe storms, especially updrafts (vortex/tornado activity) and downdrafts (intense rain/hail) is by looking at Enhanced Echo Tops.
This shows the height of the storm structure itself. Larger is stronger, usually. You can also see where there is a strong updraft or downdraft. Often, the storm is too close/too far away for this to be a lot of help, but seeing the overall height of the structure can be very helpful even if it's somewhat estimated.
The green in this image is the most powerful part of the storm - the echo top. The dark blue is powerful as well, just a bit less. If there's a tornado, it's going to be somewhere around an echo top of dark blue or greater. All the rest, in lighter blue, is just rain.
Remember, this is a bit variable based upon distance from the radar.
Anyway, I hope that's helpful to some of you. I find it extremely fascinating!
Severe storm tracking is a blast, and I've spent many hours over the last five or six years learning what I can about how to identify and track tornadoes and such.
Without going into excessive detail on wind shear and such, below you'll see some screen shots of severe weather and what exactly you're looking at. There are plenty of good weather radar apps out there, but I recommend RadarScope. It's consistently the best!
Let's dive in:
First up, is Super Res Reflectivity. This is what commonly forms the radar you see on TV.
The radar shoots out from a set point, and the echo that comes back forms the image below. Denser material (hail, large rain drops, etc) form pinks and purples, all the way down to green, which is very light rain.
One note, is that you can adjust your settings from Tilt 1 to Tilt 4. This adjusts the distance off the ground, and the angle, the radar is beaming from. Tilt 1 gives you the greatest distance because it's shooting as close to the ground as possible. Tilt 4 is shooting up higher, so you may get a bit more accuracy from the radar but much less distance. The beam eventually ends up in space, and is no help at all on ground level.
Many times, you're looking for a "hook" on the end of the radar image. However, it is very common that you will NOT see a distinct hook with a tornado on the ground. Which leads to the next function: SuperRes Velocity.
The single most helpful radar function to use in identifying sever storms with rotation is SuperRes Velocity. This gives you the velocity of the winds in relation to the radar itself. Consider the image below... red is moving toward the radar while green is moving away. Typically speaking, the brighter the colors the stronger the winds.
There's a large tornado in this image. Easy to identify for sure! It's where the red and green appear to be circling each other, indicating that the winds relative to the radar are going in opposite directions.
Now, one thing to be aware of - you'll get false positives. The further the rotation is from the radar, the less likely the tornado is actually on the ground. The radar, a 75 miles away, is shooting up into the clouds.
This will guarantee that there is indeed rotation, but it may not be making it to the ground. Heads up, though, if something like this is coming your way!
Again, the brighter the color, the greater the intensity.
These are both from the Moore, OK tornado a few years back. The first image is a handy side-by-side.
This is what that tornado looked like on the ground, as an F5. Not much left after that one.
So, if you see rotation, and the reflectivity model shows a hook, is there a tornado for sure? No, but it's likely. It could very well be cloud-level rotation that could easily create a ground-level tornado and you SHOULD be taking cover, but it's not certain that there is actually one on the ground.
That's where differential reflectivity comes in.
With this feature, different reflectivity from the surrounding areas indicates a ball of debris in the air, where it shouldn't be. This is only used to confirm a tornado on the ground, not to originally find it.
Correlation coefficient also helps to identify items that "shouldn't" be in the air. See the two images below, taken during the Hurricane Harvey spin-off tornado outbreak. See the mixing of color? That means you've got a problem!
Another way you can identify severe storms, especially updrafts (vortex/tornado activity) and downdrafts (intense rain/hail) is by looking at Enhanced Echo Tops.
This shows the height of the storm structure itself. Larger is stronger, usually. You can also see where there is a strong updraft or downdraft. Often, the storm is too close/too far away for this to be a lot of help, but seeing the overall height of the structure can be very helpful even if it's somewhat estimated.
The green in this image is the most powerful part of the storm - the echo top. The dark blue is powerful as well, just a bit less. If there's a tornado, it's going to be somewhere around an echo top of dark blue or greater. All the rest, in lighter blue, is just rain.
Remember, this is a bit variable based upon distance from the radar.
Anyway, I hope that's helpful to some of you. I find it extremely fascinating!
