Radar Rain direction

[desperately seeking]

Hi All,

I'm a subscriber to the "lite extra" package 'cos I like to see where the rain is on a Saturday and Sunday when I'm due to play cricket.

My question is how do you tell which direction (with some degree of accuracy) the rain is moving in? I know you can add the overlays with different wind directions at different heights but I don't know which heights are relevant to the actual rain bearing clouds.

Any hints greatfully accepted....

DS

[Gibli]

As ever in meteorology it depends . . . You will have noticed sometimes how thunderstorms move up from the south while the wind near the ground is east or northeast.

As a general rule rain moves with the direction of the wind well above the ground. If you look at the direction of the wind at 10,000 to 18,000 feet (700 to 500 millibars) that should give you the answer in most cases.

In the short term (up to 3 or 4 hours) look at the rain movement on a loop of the 15 minute radar images if you can.

Hope that helps

Gibli.

[Paul]

As a general rule, the 500hpa wind overlay is the most accurate, but this can be dependent on conditions so definitely cross match that to an animation of the rainfall to get best results.