![]() “If they are up there, the radar can see them,” Schuur said. “They all return power to radar in their unique way,” Schuur said. “Insects are just like raindrops they reflect the radar’s energy back to the radar, just like a raindrop would.”īoth Hennen and Schuur agree that it could have been any kind of insect. “Insects on radar is something we see all the time,” said Terry Schuur, a research scientist with the University of Oklahoma School of Meteorology. The radar can determine the size and shape of an object so it knows if it’s rain, hail, etc. “The radar sends a beam of energy into the atmosphere and if it hits a ‘target’ it sends that information back to the radar.” “Weather radar is now very sophisticated in what it can detect,” Hennen said. Radar can pick up all kinds of atmospheric phenomenon beyond rain. It even “sees” the famous Austin, Texas, bats that migrate on an almost nightly basis from under the Congress Bridge.ĭoppler radar can detect insects, smoke and even bats. Radar can pick up smoke from wildfires, or a bird migration. What might be causing all the radar returns around #Phoenix between 6-7 PM this evening? Is it rain or something else? Any guesses? #azwx /Kh9bTQAiDA- NWS Phoenix September 14, 2020 In Phoenix, it was bats that made an appearance on radar. #ohwx /6flOP7aCNA- The REAL Mark Johnson June 24, 2020 They dont bite and its a sign of a healthy lake. Its May Fly Season.They show up by the millions on our Power of 5 Doppler radar. Just last spring, millions of mayflies showed up on the radar over Lake Erie. This phenomenon is something that we have seen before. i990mEBJnl- NWS Baltimore-Washington June 5, 2021 The Hydrometeor Classification algorithm shows much of it to be Biological in nature. You may have noticed a lot of fuzziness (low reflectivity values) on our radar recently. The National Weather Service office in Baltimore/Washington, DC, tweeted this image, that caught a lot of attention over the weekend. “While weather radar is very precise, it would likely take hundreds of thousands, if not millions of cicadas to be able to see what we saw yesterday on radar,” said CNN meteorologist Dave Hennen. The big, black-winged insects that have emerged after their 17-year slumber were in such large numbers, they showed up on radar. What could have easily been mistaken for rain, wasn’t.
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