Those of you that frequently look at weather radar have perhaps noticed a nearly persistent feature showing up over southern Iowa. The featured map presents the frequency of RADAR returns over 0 dBZ for most of yesterday. The red bar you see is coming from the Saint Louis RADAR and is the result of interference, perhaps coming from a nearby cellular phone tower. The map also shows blobs around the Des Moines and Davenport RADAR due to ground clutter (the RADAR beam hitting stuff on the ground and reflecting back to the RADAR). These types of phenomena make RADAR meteorology fun and a challenge to derive reliable products like precipitation estimates from reflectivity data.

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Tags:   nexrad