WeatherStory Radar
Radar guides
How to read what a WSR-88D is actually telling you — illustrated with full-resolution Level II data rather than diagrams.
- How to read weather radarWhat the colors mean, why velocity matters more than reflectivity, and what the radar physically cannot see.
- Tornadoes on radarHook echoes, velocity couplets and debris signatures — and how confident each one should make you.
- The supercell, on radarMesocyclone, BWER, rear-flank downdraft — what a rotating updraft does to the data.
- Squall lines, bow echoes and derechosOrganized linear convection, why bowing means damaging wind, and what actually qualifies as a derecho.
- Outlooks and forecast modelsWhat the SPC categories mean, and the most common way people misread a convection-allowing model.
Every figure in these guides is unmodified output from WeatherStory Radar — full-resolution Level II read straight from NOAA’s public archive. Nothing is thresholded, smoothed or decimated, and nothing is simulated.