Strangeness in radar image/ what is it?

Okay so straight to the point. These are screenshots of some radar images that my wife found. We were looking up local weather because of the way a storm seemed to be sneaking up on us and these pictures immediately looked very odd to us. We are by no means experts in radar and have considered logical explanations for what we are seeing. The only thing we could think of was that there is always that small blank space in the center of radar images but these are way larger than any we remember seeing. Anyways, what do y'all think?


binged.it...

Edit to add: you can look at other days and see even more of these circles, but there is a distinct lack of them around D.C. and the New England area. We realize there could be some very simple explanation and that this is nothing unusual, but it looked so strange and out of place that I wanted to ask some of you guys who know about these things.

a reply to: Enigma Publius

That is completely normal. Are you in Texas, Oklahoma or possibly Kansas?

a reply to: Enigma Publius

You could always pull those images into Photoshop or some other software (gimp), determine their centers, then overlay with Google Satellite maps and take a gander as to whats there.

Then once you have all the data, see if the dots connect with any commonalities.

a reply to: Allaroundyou

Not in those areas

a reply to: Enigma Publius

That's interesting. Lots of circles, like a pattern. Hmm..

Thanks for sharing

a reply to: Enigma Publius

Those are where the weather radar arrays are located.

Because the radar arrays are at ground level, they face upwards at an angle. This means that close to the arrays is below cloud level, hence no cloud bounce back.

a reply to: Sovaka

Commonalities like as in what? I'm not sure what you mean. Not being a smarty pants i just don't remember ever seeing dozens of empty rings this large in radar images. Normal radar rings still show something inside them, the "ring" is only noticeable where the the radar image ends or "borders".
This reminds me a little of that image that was posted of the massive perfect diagonal line that scored across the radar in a massive swath of land i think it was most of the northern hemisphere. I couldn't find it again, if anyone remember that i'd appreciate a link.

They are calibrating the nationwide radar.

Those circles line up with cities.

Definitely odd. I wonder what it means? If pressure rings are forming like that, it might mean some electromagnetic anomalies. Is it bad or something that can be used for prediction farther in the future? I don't know. An occasional ring like that might be normal, but there seems to be a lot of them at the same time.

Those are probably Nexrad weather stations.

en.wikipedia.org...#/media/File:NEXRAD_NETWORK.jpg

These rings appear when there is hot dry weather and there is dust in the air. Similar radar rings have been seen in Australia and Belgium.

a reply to: stormcell

Your answer seems to be contradictory. At first you seem to say they are artifacts from weather stations (arrays?) then say they are from dusty weather? Again, I'm not being a smarty pants. I know very little about this. My very first thought was about the blank spot in the middle you see ANY time you look at your weather radar, but that is almost always about the span of a mile or two by my guess, these circles encompass diameters bigger than entire counties. And I can confirm that the weather was extremely hot and muggy right on or next to several of these rings. Not dusty at all

a reply to: rickymouse

Yes check some other dates of u like they seem to change position, or at least that's what it looks like to me, my wife noticed the complete absence of them around New England and DC

a reply to: whyamIhere

This kind of makes sense to me. Are the nationwide radars different? Is there a much wider range radar for weather than the ones I've found? If the blank spot in the middle where there is no moisture or cloud bounce was this big at your local weather stations radar, any city that the radar was in would see NOTHING

a reply to: stormcell

Another thing, look out into the Gulf, and you'll see the edges of some of these rings, much too far from land to be part of the ring on land. That sounds confusing but I can't think of another way to say it. Are there Doppler radars out in the ocean? What could cause the distinct ring within a ring that covers all of central alabama? This is quite strange.
Me and my wife look at the weather pretty often, she's a stormaphile: loves thunder and rain.... I could see me just not ever noticing these rings but it's harder to believe she hasn't either. They stood out to both of us at the same time. I'm still not convinced this is normal. I've got a very open mind to a logical explination, yet at the same time I've seen absolutely astounding radar proof of weather manipulation before and this reminds me of some of them. Does anyone remember that extremely massive line that cut northeast across most of the northern hemisphere and disrupted entire jet streams as it did? I can't find it again but that was crazy

originally posted by: Enigma Publius
a reply to: stormcell

Your answer seems to be contradictory. At first you seem to say they are artifacts from weather stations (arrays?) then say they are from dusty weather? Again, I'm not being a smarty pants. I know very little about this. My very first thought was about the blank spot in the middle you see ANY time you look at your weather radar, but that is almost always about the span of a mile or two by my guess, these circles encompass diameters bigger than entire counties. And I can confirm that the weather was extremely hot and muggy right on or next to several of these rings. Not dusty at all

The artifacts would be caused by something in the atmosphere, not a failure of the radar system. You get artifacts called ground clutter caused by buildings and mountains. From the other articles, it was definitely hot (Australia and Belgium). Being muggy would have lots of a water vapour in the air which would cause refraction:
en.wikipedia.org...

"Water vapor reflects radar to a lesser extent than do water's other two phases. In the form of drops and ice crystals, water acts as a prism,"

Dust in the atmosphere will create a fine line with clutter (random dots) behind it. That could be what these rings are.
This tutorial has more details:

www.radartutorial.eu...

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: Enigma Publius

Those are where the weather radar arrays are located.

Because the radar arrays are at ground level, they face upwards at an angle. This means that close to the arrays is below cloud level, hence no cloud bounce back.

Radar doesn't "bounce back" from clouds, only from precipitation. I think what happened here is an artifact from setting the ground clutter filter at too high a setting. You often get false returns from things close to the antenna, so weather radars have filters to reduce this clutter. If you set the gain too high, you end up eliminating all returns for an area around the station.

a reply to: Enigma Publius

As in do the centers of these rings line up with any structures at their physical location?
What are these structures? Are they all Radar stations?

Generally when you see a ring type artifact on any radar, its due to the scan range tolerances of the radar station itself.
So what you could be seeing here is a combine/collated image of all the radar stations output. Hence why you see so many rings.

Otherwise, "conspiracy theory time", it may line up with off the books stations that could either be reporting on the current weather or could be otherwise effecting/controlling the weather in those areas.

originally posted by: Enigma Publius
Okay so straight to the point. These are screenshots of some radar images that my wife found. We were looking up local weather because of the way a storm seemed to be sneaking up on us and these pictures immediately looked very odd to us. We are by no means experts in radar and have considered logical explanations for what we are seeing. The only thing we could think of was that there is always that small blank space in the center of radar images but these are way larger than any we remember seeing. Anyways, what do y'all think?


binged.it...

Edit to add: you can look at other days and see even more of these circles, but there is a distinct lack of them around D.C. and the New England area. We realize there could be some very simple explanation and that this is nothing unusual, but it looked so strange and out of place that I wanted to ask some of you guys who know about these things.

Did you try Googling your question?

www.accuweather.com...
www.weatherworksinc.com...
blog.metservice.com...
weather.com...


It's remarkable just how much information is out there

a reply to: Enigma Publius

The rings match the positions of the NEXRAD radar stations. It looks like ground clutter. In the past these rings have been caused by insects, bats and migrating birds, among other things, but t would be rare to have clutter from living things over such a wide number of radar stations, so I would put it down to atmospheric conditions.

The reason you see an artificial looking pattern is simply because the data comes from a network of radar stations in that pattern.