Tornadoes And Radar

I had full intentions of going through every storm that produced a tornado and write up an analysis fo each one... but to be honest with you, I'm pooped and tired of looking at radar. I did want to grab the radar image of the strongest tornado that we had in Region 8 over the weekend. It was an EF3 on Friday night that destroyed Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Jackson County. If you missed Josh Harvision's story today, it is worth a click to http://www.kait8.com/ to watch...

Radar is not as simple as we somtimes make it out to be... Some see red and green beside each other and that automatically means TORNADO. Well, not all greens mean grean and not all reds mean red. I know you are wondering what the heck I'm talking about at this point... I'm talking about something we call "aliasing"

Velocity aliasing occurs when the hydrometeors speed "screw up" the algorithms used to calculate the speed. They are going faster than the maximum detectable velocity due to their speed and the motion of the storm. In other words, the bright green from Tupelo to Augusta should be bright red. The bright green near Weldon is legit. Bright greens are winds coming toward the radar site and the reds are winds going away from the radar site.... Therfore, the tornado is near Weldon or Shoffner... It's an EF3 at this point. Being at the end of the radar range increased the aliasing too.

I hope that makes sense... I'm still not caught up on sleep.

Goodnight,
Ryan