Day 96: “Look At All The Pretty Colors”

Posted by pmarsh on 6 Apr 2010 | 2 comments

From time to time I like to make a non-technical post so that my wife continues to read my blog.  Tonight’s blog is in honor of her.

The image above is a radar depiction of a developing squall line along a cold front / dryline over central Oklahoma.  I won’t go into the details of how or why it developed. The reason is that my wife doesn’t like the technical explanations of radar information that I give. When I start to do this, which is quite often actually, she mocks me by saying, “Look at all the pretty colors!”  Hence the origin of the title of tonight’s post.

For completeness, the various parts of the image above are:

• Orange polygons are outlines of Severe Thunderstorm Warnings
• Yellow lines are the outlines of National Weather Service County Warning Areas (jurisdictions, if you will)
• Counties shaded in the purplish color are under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch
• Cyan dots and letters are location and names of radar sites
• White circles with sticks/barbs coming out from the middle of them are places that are reporting surface conditions.  (The “sticks” coming out from the middle of the circle represents the direction the wind is blowing from.)

Note:  My wife is actually the smart one in the family; she’s currently working on a Ph.D. in Mathematics.  She just isn’t all that interested in the technical aspects of weather.