When certain weather conditions allow, the radar lights up...not with rain, but with noise. Radar detects other items that are not precipitation, and that is generally called noise. Sometimes, you can see and/or hear the noise. How is that possible?

The instigator for Wednesday night and Thursday morning's radar noise was a cold front that dropped some drenching downpours and thunderstorms across Northeast Ohio. It was slow to move out, and the cold air behind the cold front was having a tough time moving into the area. When two different air masses collide, it often creates a temperature inversion, where the air higher up in the sky briefly gets warmer.

Usually, air gets colder the higher in the sky it gets. This inversion traps waves, including the ones beamed out by radar, and returns

See Full Page