A Very Juicy Storm
I woke up this morning refreshed from an extra hour of sleep and excited to check out the storm. First thing I did was pull up the radar and saw something that one doesn't see all that often. As full and complete coverage of precipitation as you can observe with the KMTX radar. It's rare to see situations where there is complete coverage of radar echoes here, but there you have it. Such a situation also allows you to see all of the places where the radar beam is blocked or partially blocked by the topography. These produce bands of lower reflectivities or no reflectivity "down radial" or beyond the terrain feature as one moves away from the radar. Below is a schematic of this effect. Source: S ecrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth One can also see a ring around the radar that looks a bit like a donut. This area of higher radar reflectivities is produced where the beam cuts through the melting layer where falling snow is warming, melting, and becoming r...