Radar Lab Final Study Guide

• Lab portion will deal mostly with interpretation and understanding how to use watads. I may ask you to draw what some feature looks like, so bring colored pencils. Or I may ask you how you would find something using watads (i.e. what product do you use, do you need to look at an animation, a x-section, multiple tilts, etc.)
• The things on this list are possible questions, but they are not the ONLY possible questions.

• What are the three stages of an airmass thunderstorm? How is a supercell thunderstorm different?
• What is a WER and BWER? How do you identify them?
• What is a hook echo?
• Know the structure of a supercell. Be able to sketch:
• reflectivity pattern
• where hail would be
• where the two gust fronts are (know their names also)
• where the mesocyclone would be found
• where the tornado would be found
• Know the difference between and be able to give an example of when you would use each:
• base reflectivity vs. composite reflectivity
• velocity vs. storm relative velocity
• know how to draw and interpret given either of the other:
• a hodograph
• VAD winds
• radial velocity image
• Know about the data in the bins!!!!!!!
• What is a bright band? How do you verify one is there with a radar image and with other data?
• What would the following look like on a radar image:
• mesocyclone
• tornado
• storm top divergence
• There will be a question from the guest lecture on lidar, possibly a question like:
• how is lidar different from radar?
• how is the "lidar equation" different from the "radar equation"?
• what are three things that a lidar can detect that a radar can't?