Can someone help me understand what the different colors mean on the radars?  For instance, I presume when you see green it means there is rain....darker green being heavier rain, lighter shades of green being lighter rain.

But what about the yellow, orange and red colors...?

Right now...at this very minute, where I live in West Chester there is a stripe of orange over me, with a yellow area that just passed through.  I've been watching the radar as this storm comes through, and when it was all green over me, that's when it was raining the heaviest where I live (if you can consider it heavy...more like lightly moderate.)  But as soon as that yellow and subsequent orange area came over me, it STOPPED raining....??  How come?  I thought the yellow, orange and red were the heaviest precip areas.  Am I wrong?  And not a peep of thunder over me.  Oh, I can hear it in the distance....over Warrent County right now, which ALSO has a big blob of yellow and orange over it....but nothing here.  And hardly any lightning.

So what's the deal?  What do the colors indicate?

I was kinda wondering that myself, I thought the yellow, orange, and red were the heaviest parts of the storms...

Joe

Pretty much you are correct in defining the levels of precip based on the color scheme.  Obviously during this day and age, it is possible to use whatever color format you want to denote levels of precip.  I'm not sure what radar you were looking at, but I can tell you that with the randomness of the storms over the last few days, it is quite possible the radar may have showed a storm over your area, but at a more zoomed level, it may have been just off from your direct house/neighborhood?  I'd have to see or know what  you were looking at.  I can also say that sometimes zooming in doesn't always help; in fact, many of the advertisements for zooming in to street level are not accurate to say the least.  (Remember, radar does not look at that specific of an area, rather more of a "region" if you will).

Don't know if this makes sense - but again, without seeing what you were commenting on, it is not as easy to answer!

 

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http://home.fuse.net/sharonvilleweather/Index.htm

Local Cincinnati Mesomap: http://home.fuse.net/sharonvilleweather/mesomap.htm

I was looking at the interactive radar on the WLWT.com website...(sorry, Local12 - it just happened to be the first site I went to.)  Obviously I can't rewind the radar to yesterday so that I can show you what I was looking at, but rest assured I zoomed in on my neighborhood in West Chester and it was quite clearly under a yellow segment of the storm, followed by an orange section.  It wasn't in the larger area of orange, nor the red bullseye, as that was over the Mason area to my east.  However, my street was obviously covered with a large enough segment that it should have been raining heavy at the time.  But it simply wasn't.  It's as if the storm had passed completely.

Is it possible the radar simply picks up the cloud tops, and not actually the rain?

Well Trebor, your first post is correct, at least when it comes to the color scheme on that radar. But that radar uses what is called, someone correct me if i am wrong please, but i believe it is Level 2 Nexrad Data, which only updates every 5-8 minutes.
 
Any way there is a point to this and that is that the interactive radar on all the sites is dated information and what was over your area at that time may not have been showed live. by the time the information caught up to your location the rain had probably moved on off to the east. 

I hope that made sense. If not please comment back and would be happy to explain it in more detail.

I'm not convinced it is a timing issue.  Either way, Trebor states that he saw returns of precip. over his neighborhood, but saw nothing in real-time.  Whether it was 5 min. updates on the radar or instantaneous returns, it "should" have rained according to him.  I don't know what happened, other than what I stated above.

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http://home.fuse.net/sharonvilleweather/Index.htm

Local Cincinnati Mesomap: http://home.fuse.net/sharonvilleweather/mesomap.htm

Possibly a forming hail shaft and that showed up higher in the atmosphere but it wasn't rainting that hard at the surface?

nwswannabe:

Well Trebor, your first post is correct, at least when it comes to the color scheme on that radar. But that radar uses what is called, someone correct me if i am wrong please, but i believe it is Level 2 Nexrad Data, which only updates every 5-8 minutes.
 
Any way there is a point to this and that is that the interactive radar on all the sites is dated information and what was over your area at that time may not have been showed live. by the time the information caught up to your location the rain had probably moved on off to the east. 

I hope that made sense. If not please comment back and would be happy to explain it in more detail.

Yeah, you made sense.  I considered the possibility that it may have been time-delayed.  But I thought the point of having the interactive radars was so we could see what was happening at any given time for a given neighborhood.  Otherwise, I don't see the point in having them available to the public.

wxenthus:

I'm not convinced it is a timing issue.  Either way, Trebor states that he saw returns of precip. over his neighborhood, but saw nothing in real-time.  Whether it was 5 min. updates on the radar or instantaneous returns, it "should" have rained according to him.  I don't know what happened, other than what I stated above.

Well, more to the point, it did rain here...but not when I was seeing the yellow and orange returns over my neighborhood.  And the rain that did fall wasn't what I would consider to be anything more than "lightly moderate"....for example, on a scale of 1-10 (with 1 being sprinkles and 10 being blinding downpours), it wasn't anything more than a 5.  Don't most yellows and oranges indicate more of a heavy deluge, such as a 7 or more?  That didn't happen at any time when the storm passed over...and likewise, all the thunder that occurred was off in the distance.

Well using your scale a yellow would be about a 5-6. Orange would be a 6-7 so it wouldn't be be that far off. Unless you were seeing red and in that case there is some suspicion. Red would be anything over 7. Oranges and Yellows indicate moderate rain.

On your other note. it would be ideal for the radars to be live but none of the interactive ones are. In fact you continuously have to refresh the page to get the most up to date image.


If you want a live radar... here is a link:  http://www.wlextv.com/global/story.asp?s=10035807

It is out of Lexington so you will not always be able to see north of the river but it s a live radar sweep and is very accurate. Even 100 miles away. It may be a little difficult to see your specific neighborhood, but you get the gist of what is to come.

Okay, then it does stand to reason that the radar was time delayed.  I don't see how else it would make sense.  So when I was seeing the yellow and orange, I was actually looking at what happened about 5-10 minutes earlier in real time outside my window.

And if that's the case, that means we're still hurting for time when we have severe weather, including tornadoes...by the time the radar indicates it, the tornado could have already hit...

All TV stations have a live radar here in Cincinnati so if the weather were life threatening they would break in and show you a live radar. But there is a live radar image also available on wlwt.com at this address (I found after i posted the one out of Lexington) : 

http://www.wlwt.com/weather/18151265/iframe.html?qs=;longname=;shortname=Interactive;days=&ib_wxwidget=true#HEARSTWX=http%3A//www.wlwt.com/weather/5041253/media.html%3Fqs%3D%3Bref%3D/weather/18150213/media.html%3Blongname%3DLive%2520Radar.

Copy and paste this into your address bar and it will take you to the live radar image