Thursday, February 19, 2009

Radar, Verified By Video

As you know, I keep a close eye on severe weather all across the south because I have family and friends in TN, TX, AL, MS, etc.... Who am I kidding, I watch severe weather across the country.

Yesterday, I was watching some wicked looking storms in Alabama. One storm in particular looked to be putting down some severe hail as indicated by radar. Radar showed what we a call a "Three Body Scatter Spike" on storm south of Marion, AL. A three body scatter spike is the little green line that is seen to the left of the storm below. A TBSS is a unique "flag" that we have large hail. I invite you to read this link to see how this anomaly occurs. More or less, when the radar beam hits the hail, it reflects to the ground... then back to the hail... then back to the radar. Since the signal takes longer to return to the radar, it "thinks" the rain is farther from the radar site. This produces the little line of false reflectivity away from the radar site. Make sense?

This assumption of severe hail was confirmed this morning when I saw the video below. When this radar image was taken, a chaser had punched right into this storm! Take a ride with him into this wicked storm for about 10 minutes. It gets pretty intense. I would not have wanted to be in that storm!



Have a great day,
Ryan

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice video.....


Ryan you need to see the video I shot when the big storms came threw in 2007, maybe 06'. It was the same storm that put down the tornado that hit Marmaduke, anyway I got some awesome footage of the baseball siaze hail that hit Pocahontas and caused millions of dollars worth of damage....including my 2005 ford explorer that was a complete loss :-(

Anonymous said...

WoW! I would NOT have wanted to be there! The last place I'd gotten was under trees! ha ha ha
Nice Storm! Scary Though...

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the info on the TBSS. I am very big on noticing patterns, and this was a new one for me. Cool! 8)

Mike Wilhelm said...

Great post Ryan. I was the one in the video. Brian, you are so right about the trees. There's something weird that happens when you are in the middle of it. There is panic mixed with beig being mesmerized by the storm itself. Logical thinking can easily escape you. I cannot tell you how many times I have asked myself why I did this or that. I shouldn't have been the trees, I should have been in the ditch, and (most of all) I shouldn't have been there. It was a pretty amazing experience, though!