Nw Radar - Snow/sleet/rain?

[barrett]

Probably completely the wrong place to be posting this (couldn't find anywhere more logical though) - apologies.

A question primarily for the NW team I guess, but will take any answers I can get. I was just wondering how the distinction between rain/sleet/snow was made on the radar display. Is this using data from the radar, or model temperature data, or something else? Be quite technical if you can as I know quite a lot about radar meteorology.

Cheers

[Paul]

Hi Barrett, it uses model data and also ground station data for verifying temperatures. Within the model data it uses a mix of various parameters including thicknesses, dewpoints, atmospheric and 2m temps among others.

[Tom D]

Thanks for that Paul, I too was wondering how it worked :o

[Andy Bown]

The Extra radar is stuck at 19.20, good evening for that to happen !

[fine wine]

It might be my memory plating up but it seems to have done this a few times in the past during periods of heavy use!

[Paul]

Apologies, the Met-office are having one or two problems, should be back upto date shortly though..

[Button Up]

Hi Paul,

Hopefully you are the right person to direct this query at ? I have noticed that just off the coast of Clacton where i am there is a bright echo on the radar which has been there for a couple of weeks and i was wondering if it is a glich with the radar or would it possibly be due to the fact that there is work going on in that area building a wind farm which would obviously be quite high, the only thought i had about that theory however was that they don't seem to show up else where in the north sea !

I have added a screen shot to show what i mean so if you or anyone else has any idea's i would be interested to hear them.

Many thanks

BU

[Paul]

Not entirely sure of the reason (will find out), but it is anaprop - ie false radar echo's which aren't currently being filtered by the meto for whatever reason. Will draw it to their attention and let you know what they say!

[Button Up]

Ok thanks for the reply it will be intresting to see what the cause is.

BU