Radar outage in South West?

[BenW]

Is there an outage with the radar covering the South West of the UK? It's rained four times now, once overnight and three times this morning and nothing at all showing on the radar. Admittedly it was light rain but enough to register on my rain gauge. I've seen rain on radar that doesn't reach the ground before but not the other way around!

[Paul]

There's no outage in the SW of the UK at the moment, although unrelated, the Shannon radar in SW Ireland is actually out of commission for an upgrade. 

In terms of it missing the light rain, it's not uncommon for radar to miss drizzle and the like tbh - the rain in London this morning was also not picked up as an example. There's a bit more info about some of the issues radar can have here:

Understanding Weather Radar

WWW.NETWEATHER.TV

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How does the rain radar work? There is a network of radar stations across the UK and Ireland scanning the skies and outputting images showing rain, snow and thunderstorms helping the weather forecast.

 

[BenW]

Okay thanks.

Whilst you're here.... I've always wondered what happens in areas where radar coverage overlaps. Presumably the system is clever enough not to overlay them on to of each other and show rain twice as heavy in the overlap area but then it also needs to work when one of them is out of service. Any ideas how it works?

[Nick L]

1 hour ago, BenW said:

Okay thanks.

Whilst you're here.... I've always wondered what happens in areas where radar coverage overlaps. Presumably the system is clever enough not to overlay them on to of each other and show rain twice as heavy in the overlap area but then it also needs to work when one of them is out of service. Any ideas how it works?

There are individual radar images from the dozen or so radar sites across the UK, and they are then "stitched" together at source (i.e. the Met Office). No idea about how it's actually done but yes there are automated processes which eliminate any overlap into a "composite" image. Trouble is, sometimes the composite image isn't the best.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Nick L