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Upper Midwest Radar Help |
A measurement of the location and intensity of precipitation. "Reflectivity" is the amount of transmitted power returned to the radar receiver, measured in dBZ (decibels of Z, where Z represents the energy reflected back to the radar). Used to detect precipitation, evaluate storm structure, locate atmospheric boundaries and determine hail potential. More information.
Estimated accumulated rainfall, continuously updated, since the last one-hour break in precipitation. This product is used to locate flood potential over urban or rural areas, estimate total basin runoff and provide rainfall accumulations for the duration of the event. More information.
This interactive webapp enables you to linearly extrapolate or "forecast" the movement of selected items (usually storms) in a sequence of images.
When you click the "Extrapolate" button, you are then instructed to select the initial position of the "target" (storm), by clicking the pointer on it. As soon as you enable this mode, the animation will stop and the first frame will be shown. At this point, you may also use the front/back stepping "arrows" to step forward/backward through the frames in order to determine what your "target" might be.
After you pick the starting point of your "target", the program will show you the last (most recent) frame and you will be asked to select the ending point...again, by clicking on the "target" in the image.
Once you have selected the end point, a line will appear with times that show the linearlly extrapolated movement. You may move this line around to align it will a particular geographic location.
When you are done, you may either click on the information bar to select a new point, or click the "Done" button to finish.
Disclaimer: use at your own risk. We make no claims as to the accuracy or suitability of this webapp for your particular application. By using this, you agree to hold us harmless.
Select this option if you wish to view the radar images using an alternate color scale that has more contrast between the different levels.
These images are a combination or composite of the "Base Reflectivity" data from all of the radars in the Upper Midwest. This is the reason that the products "Radial Velocity" and "Storm Total Precipitation" are not available for the option "Midwest composite".
Select this option if you wish to view the latest image without downloading all of the overlays and without using the Java applet, AniS (used to provide the ability to overlay maps, zoom, animate ...). This will speed up the downloading and will also allow people without Java installed to view the latest radar image. The options "Animate" and "Forecast Storm Movement" require Java and so this option is not available in conjunction with those options.
Select this if you wish to use cookies so that your browser remembers and displays what you were last viewing next time you visit this page.
Use this button if you wish to save the currently viewed image to your computer, by opening a separate window with just the radar image displayed.If viewing an animation, you must click on the "Stop" button first to stop the animation to use this button.
Use this button to zoom into the radar image. When the 'zoom' button is clicked, the cursor will change shape. When you click with the left button on the image, it will be zoomed one factor (x2, x3, x4...) at the cursor location. After the first zoom, the button will be relabelled "reset". You may then 'roam' the image around by dragging the mouse. More left-clicks will zoom in farther; right-clicks will zoom out one step per click. If the "reset" button is clicked, the image will be restored to the original.
This button will attempt to force a reload of the images, ignoring any cached images.
This button is used to control whether a movie loop or a rock back-and-forth mode is used when viewing an radar animation.