If this had occurred in 1982 instead of 2014, meteorologists never would have issued a tornado warning unless someone called to report spotting it.
The tornado is completely wrapped in rain so it looks no different from its surroundings on the precipitation image. At the time this image was captured, there was a tornado just as strong but three times larger (1/3 of a mile wide) tearing through a few small farm communities. On the other hand, take this image from south-central Mississippi back on April 7 of this year. Looking at the radar leaves little doubt that the storm is rotating and likely producing a tornado.
Here's an example of a rather tiny supercell with a classic hook as it dragged a large, wedge tornado through midtown Mobile, Alabama on Christmas Day 2012. Most tornadoes are relatively weak and short-lived, and you'd never know they were there if you were looking at a regular radar image showing precipitation. The vast majority of tornadoes that touch down in the United States don't come with the (in)famous hook echo that people are familiar with. When they gained the ability to see the winds rotating within a thunderstorm, it greatly increased tornado warning lead times, saving countless lives over the past few decades. Meteorologists used to issue tornado warnings almost solely when someone spotted one on the ground and reported it, or when the thunderstorms on radar had the classic "hook" that possibly indicated the presence of a strong tornado. The ability to see the winds inside of a thunderstorm is a huge deal. The product that shows winds is called "base velocity," since it's really measuring the velocity of the rain and hail inside the storm. Starting in 1988, the National Weather Service rolled out a new type of radar, which you'll sometimes see referred to by its official name - "WSR-88D," which stands for " Weather Surveillance Radar-19 88, Doppler."ĭoppler radar can not only see the precipitation itself, but it's able to detect which way the precipitation is moving and how fast it's going - essentially, it can detect both precipitation and wind. It could see where rain was falling and how heavy it was, but that was it.
Before the late 1980s, weather radar could only detect precipitation. Doppler radar is a pretty big dealĭoppler radar in the United States is arguably the single greatest advance in weather technology in the past 50 years. Since not everyone is a weather geek, one of the most common questions people asked was "what am I looking at?" Fear not - here's how you can see a tornado using weather radar. During the recent severe storms, weather geeks were posting radar images all over social media.
0 kommentar(er)
