Met Eireann Radar

Storm 10

How come Met Eireann is showing some intense showers over the North East yet nothing on Rain Today radar, is there rain or a fault in the radar.

http://www.met.ie/latest/rainfall_radar.asp

Trogdor

I noticed that it was acting up and showing intense echos over the isle of man and western uk a few hours ago, problem mustn't be fixed yet whatever it is..

Danno

Probably something to do with reflection of the Saharan dust cloud over us.

BEASTERLY

I beleive it is something to do with varying layers of moisture and temperature in the atmosphere. The days heat from the sun has created different layers of air with different densities. This causes refraction of the radar radio waves until they are returned as an echo and so give false readings. Exact same principle as the appearing water effect on roads on hot days.

Su Campu

It's called anaprop (anomolous propogation) and is not a fault in the system. There is a huge temperature inversion with the anticyclone at the moment. Outgoing radar signals are reflected back downwards by this inversion at long distances from the antenna and therefore travel much further around the curvature of the earth than normal. In this way they "see", and get reflected off, distant terrain, and the echos make it back to the antenna in the same manner. They intense echos over the north midlands were probably the Scottish terrain getting picked up by the Shannon radar, and the ones over Angelsey are from the Welsh mountains (Snowdonia) on the Dublin one.

Mothman

So what does Rain Today do to remove anaprop that Met E doesn't?

Discodog

Well the radar shows no rain for miles & I have just come in from walking the dogs soaked !.

Iancar29

Discodog wrote: »

Well the radar shows no rain for miles & I have just come in from walking the dogs soaked !.

Thats that ninja rain for ya! ....:rolleyes:

pauldry

heard theyr doing a guinness world record attempt at spitting in the northeast.

maybe thats it:)

Lumi

Looks like the rainfall radar at Dublin Airport will be out of action for much of the month of May due to modernisation work
http://www.met.ie/news/display.asp?ID=117

Sponge Bob

Made feck all difference in Shannon last year bar for downtime. We don't have enough radars.....period. The sooner they put one in Dooncarton and one in Mt Gabriel the better for all of us.

octo

Sponge Bob wrote: »

We don't have enough radars.....period. The sooner they put one in Dooncarton and one in Mt Gabriel the better for all of us.

No chance whatsoever for the foreseeable future, unfortunately.

Joe Public

Su Campu wrote: »

It's called anaprop (anomolous propogation) and is not a fault in the system. There is a huge temperature inversion with the anticyclone at the moment. Outgoing radar signals are reflected back downwards by this inversion at long distances from the antenna and therefore travel much further around the curvature of the earth than normal. In this way they "see", and get reflected off, distant terrain, and the echos make it back to the antenna in the same manner. They intense echos over the north midlands were probably the Scottish terrain getting picked up by the Shannon radar, and the ones over Angelsey are from the Welsh mountains (Snowdonia) on the Dublin one.

I don't know much about how the radar signals operate but here's a general question anyway.
Does the system not detect the extra delay in return of some signals and thus ignore them or are the radar pulses not individually coded?

thetonynator

Dublin down all evening. Anyone notice the way the rain seems to be heavier the closer it gets to shannon?? as in it gets heavier as it moves across the country according to the radar?