Need help with radar please...

[depotoo]

When you click on the long range loop form the nws for Miami it shows a lot lighter activity than if you click on the adjoining Key WEst long range weather loop which both cover the same areas. Why would that be? And i'm speaking of the intensity over the palm beach county area.
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/radar/loop/DS.p ... kamx.shtml

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/radar/loop/DS.p ... kbyx.shtml

[ohiostorm]

Sometimes the farther away from the radar it gets, the weaker the storms appear. Its like that on Pittsburgh alot. You can click on Cleveland which covers half of Pittsburghs radar swath and you can see storms but when yuo go back to the Pit one they arent there.

[depotoo]

that's what is weird here though - it's the opposite!

[Huckster]

I've noticed this a lot too. I think it might also be because of sensitivity settings on the radar as well. Whatever the case, those are some really nasty storms (as of a little after midnight central time). I cannot say I remember seeing any worse looking storms heading toward SW Florida. I am looking at the short range out of Tampa and I see the pink, the next shade after the maroon on the NWS radar. When you see that pink, it's almost always indicative of hail, but since it's over water, I guess we won't know for sure just how bad it really is.

[ohiostorm]

Sometimes with snowfall, it tends to not pick up well around the radar, like a 30 mile radius or so. Especially at the beginning of the storms. It eventually fills in though.

[PurdueWx80]

I'm not sure how in-depth to go with this, but I'll give it a shot. The radar beams are sent out at an angle just above the horizon, to account for and take out any scatterers at the Earth's surface, such as buildings, trees, terrain, etc. The first scan is typically at 0.5 degrees above the horizon, and they will do several more (i.e. 1.5, 2.5, etc) to look higher into the atmosphere. If you think 3-dimensionally, the radar beam ends up being an upside down cone, with the tip being at the radar site. Geometrically, the beam will end up being higher off the ground the further you go from the radar site. This would explain why you can see all of this light precip from Key West's radar over Palm Beach county, but not from Miami's. The precip particles are likely blowoff within the anvils of the storms off the west coast of FL. Miami's radar would be sampling the atmosphere much closer to the ground, where there obviously isn't any precip. Was there rain falling at your location at that time?

Also, with regards to the snow comment - it's sort of the same problem, except often times the snow will actually be falling from the clouds, yet the lowest part of the atmosphere is very dry, so the crystals sublimate (evaporate) before getting to the surface (a.k.a. virga). Eventually the atmosphere saturates and this "ring" of snow will fill in.

Hope this helps!

[depotoo]

it does - thanks! we were having thunder and lightning all around us and it looked terrible at the the time buta ccording to miami's radar (nws) it just showed light rain, but according to the key west radar it showed red's etc. on the radar for our area.

[Anonymous]

One thing I have noticed on local radars in N Fla is different modes that radar may be in controlled by the NWS. Tallahassee NWS usually seems to keep their radar in Precip mode which is for flooding I think and dont show the true strength of some cells and their severe weather. When these storms enter the NWS Jax radar range, they are viewed in storm mode which shows the true nature of the storms and they look a lot stronger. I have noticed storms visible by both radars--jax radar shows very strong while Tallahassee radar just show heavy---no warning will be issued until the storm enters the Jax CWA of responsibillity but the storm may have been severe in the tallahassee CWA as well.