I worked as a Commercial Pilot my whole career and am now retired. I have a very unique perspective on working in under over and around weather and using a live radar while traveling hundreds of miles per hour. Being a Weathermen is the greatest job in the world and you can always be wrong and never loose your job. All they do is make educated guesses.
If you want to learn weather learn how to read a moving radar map. Weather Radar (MyRadar) is a great app and is a great resource for this and gives you pretty much live coverage with it being delayed about 10 minutes worst case scenario. This is your most accurate type of weather. Next best method is look west of your position and whatever that weather is will be in your area soon. After that the next best thing is the Weather Rock!
Absolutely. I use it for work and golf. I'm to the point where if it says 100% chance of rain I double book appointments because there's an 80% chance that the 100% chance is 100% wrong.
Often if there is not any real weather happening, the lack of real weather return can allow for other returns that are really noise to surround the area near the actual radar dish or array. If you think about it this makes sense. Signal to noise ratios would naturally enhance noise when a legitimate signal is not present. The things that would produce the noise include ground clutter and anomalous propagation. The reason it is always centered nearby the radar station is because areas further away will be at lower angles on a curved earth compared to areas closer to the radar station. When significant weather targets exist in the area, the Signal becomes much stronger for that weather return. Thus the noise that remains fairly constant is not a significant return energy compared to the signal so it is filtered out and thus your weather radar map does not show the noise.
I worked as a Commercial Pilot my whole career and am now retired. I have a very unique perspective on working in under over and around weather and using a live radar while traveling hundreds of miles per hour. Being a Weathermen is the greatest job in the world and you can always be wrong and never loose your job. All they do is make educated guesses.
If you want to learn weather learn how to read a moving radar map. Weather Radar (MyRadar) is a great app and is a great resource for this and gives you pretty much live coverage with it being delayed about 10 minutes worst case scenario. This is your most accurate type of weather. Next best method is look west of your position and whatever that weather is will be in your area soon. After that the next best thing is the Weather Rock!
Here's a great example on how to read live Radar...... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-qPtWc4heA
Try NWS radar. It now has the 88-D that many do not have.
Absolutely. I use it for work and golf. I'm to the point where if it says 100% chance of rain I double book appointments because there's an 80% chance that the 100% chance is 100% wrong.
Often if there is not any real weather happening, the lack of real weather return can allow for other returns that are really noise to surround the area near the actual radar dish or array. If you think about it this makes sense. Signal to noise ratios would naturally enhance noise when a legitimate signal is not present. The things that would produce the noise include ground clutter and anomalous propagation. The reason it is always centered nearby the radar station is because areas further away will be at lower angles on a curved earth compared to areas closer to the radar station. When significant weather targets exist in the area, the Signal becomes much stronger for that weather return. Thus the noise that remains fairly constant is not a significant return energy compared to the signal so it is filtered out and thus your weather radar map does not show the noise.
https://blog.foreflight.com/2015/07/30/when-the-radar-lies/