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The imagery on this page is generated with Unidata's McIDAS-X software package. It is because of these tools and resources that we are able to bring this data to you. Unidata empowers educational institutions like ours by providing software, support and grants to further education and research of our planet and atmosphere. To learn more about Unidata, visit them here.

DISCLAIMER:

This page, its features and contents are largely in a completed state. However, active development is still on going. If you are curious about feature development and want to float an idea past our development staff, we are certainly open to suggestions from our users. The overwhelming majority of the imagery on this page is rendered at a resolution of 900x900 pixels. Because of this we recommend viewing this page at a 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio at a resolution of 1920x1080 or greater. A mobile version of this page is still in development.

Product Description

Base reflectivity is the most basic of all NEXRAD products and can be used to illustrate some fundamental principles. Radar operates by sending out a radio wave pulse that will interact with objects and 'reflect' some portion of that signal back to the radar reciever. Reflectivity, put simply is the amount of return that the radar sees at a given azimuth and range. Meteorological targets would include objects like rain, snow, and hail. However these are not the only objects that will reflect the radar signal. Among others, the radar can also see returns from non-meteorological objects such as birds, bugs, dust, terrain, buildings, and other sources of radio waves at similar frequencies. As such, raw weather radar data is characteristically noisy given how common these types of interference are. What we display is Level 3 radar data which means it has been post-processed to reduce or remove some but not all of these sorts of returns. This post-processing is unique to each radar site and may result in some 'blindspots'. Conversely, some non-meteorlogical returns may be omitted from this post-processing clean-up (Ex. Wind farms) to avoid a loss of data in critical areas resulting in 'hotspots'. All of these caveats must be taken into consideration when viewing nearly all radar data.

Website Alert Message

Satellite: To aid in mitigating the cooling issue onboard GOES-West, NOAA is adjusting the scanning strategy of the satellite between 6Z-12Z each night around the time of the equinoxes.

Changes & impacts include Full-Disk scans every 15 minutes (instead of every 10), only one mesoscale sector per minute (instead of two), and no CONUS scans at all during this time. This will result in a loss of some GOES-17 imagery on our site, particularly over the western US.

We are investigating our options to compensate for the loss of imagery during this time, but due to technical and logistical challenges we may not be able to implement a workaround anytime soon.

More information on the GOES-17 cooling issue, impacts to products, the adjusted scanning strategy and other details can be found here.

Radar: We have released a new version of our Dual-Pol NEXRAD page. This new version no longer uses Flash, but instead uses a new in-house animator for both desktop and mobile devices. Additionally, the mobile version is designed to act as a "Web-App" on all mobile devices. Instructions are available on the page when loaded with on an applicable device. View Page.

For further information, check the following twitter accounts for periodic updates on product generation status and website improvements; @CoDWXData and @CODMeteorology. Your feedback is always appreciated, so feel free to respond to tweets or send us an email using our Feedback page.

Dual-Pol Radar Site Selection

Change Map Region: CONUS ALASKA HAWAII Addtional Sites: Guam Puerto Rico
Change Map Type: Radar Radar + Warnings

Active Severe Weather Warnings

Click warning for Full Text - Choose from Available Radars to switch site

Type Counties Affected Tornado Status Hail Size Wind Speed Available Radar(s) Issued by Issuance Time Expire Time

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Missing Data

We were unable to generate this product. This can happen for a number of different reasons. Be sure to check the status of PBZ here and/or here. If the site status is normal and this site or product suffers a continuous outage, keep us aware of it by using our Feedback Page.