Radar Summary

This is the radar summary chart, drawn live. The printed version put echo tops beside each cell as a number in hundreds of feet, an arrow for where the cell was going, and the severe weather watch boxes over the top — everything you needed to read a convective afternoon at a glance, on one sheet. The marks here are the same marks.

The outlines are ProbSevere storm objects — NOAA and CIMSS's model, running inside MRMS, which merges radar, satellite, lightning and model soundings into one number per storm: the probability that this cell produces severe weather in the next hour. The outline gets heavier as that number climbs; the number itself is beside the cell, under the top. Tap any object for the rest of what the model said about it — the tornado, hail and wind probabilities separately, the maximum estimated hail size, VIL, and how fast it is moving.

The outlines carry no colour, deliberately. The reflectivity underneath already runs from blue through green and yellow to red and magenta, and the warnings over it are red and blue; a third colour scale on top of those two would collide with both. Weight and a number say it without competing.

Everything here plays through the loop. Every object, box and polygon is stamped with the time it was true, and each frame draws only what was in force at its own scan time — so scrubbing back shows the cell when its probability was twenty percent and the warning that had not been issued yet. That is the point of the page: a storm maturing is something you can only see by watching it.

Forecast dBZ is not an official source. ProbSevere is experimental guidance, not a forecast. For watches, warnings and advisories, always consult weather.gov and the Storm Prediction Center.