Strange circles on Weather radar maps

I have never noticed this until lately and haven't been able to find much information on it.
When looking at the local radar sometimes at night I will notice these circle rings that look like rainfall but the inside of the circle is blank and these pop up in some strange places.
Here is a screen shot of tonight's map I looked at...



And here are two I seen a short while back of Wisconsin...



Now I can see if this were some glitch or testing being done on local radar systems but I have seen this from numerous radar sources around the US so I know it's not just our local radar that shows these blips.
Right now no matter what website I go to that shows the radar for the US looks like the top picture. Doesn't matter if it's a local radar or not.

So could someone please explain what causes this? Why all the radars in the US show these circles at the same time?
It looks really odd and I am not sure what to make of it. I did some google searches on "circles in weather radar pictures" and it only made me more confused since I stumbled on to some sites saying it's weather modification and other odd conspiracies.

Thanks for your input.

with the uniformity, i would lean to weather mods, or statistical anomalies. but, as any true shadow government knows, if you tell everyone you will summon the rain, and it happens promptly, ppl will follow you blindly the next time u "predict" something, you tell them its a machine agitating the atmosphere using radio frequencies to create a desired effect, and you lose the magic. its odd, i give you that, but with the weather the way its been(all of earth rlly), i wouldnt be surprised to find it as just that, odd

reply to post by darklife


Darklife.....

I have seen many different types of radar effects caused by unusual weather, technical issues, etc...

Whenever I have any questions about weather radar, I always ask OzWeatherman.

Kind regards
Maybe...maybe not

This one is quite odd. Pardon my lack of embedding. Am new and just about to go find out how to do it.

radar.weather.gov...

Cheers

Simplified, the radar stations are looking up at an angle. Close to the station it's looking at a lower level than more distant. What the circles represent is a layer at a particular range of altitudes.

I think what you are seeing is a thin (in depth) but dense and moist cloud layer covering the eastern half of the US.

hey, first post here!
what your pics is showing isn't the same as my link but its similar in a way.

www.news.com.au...

this site here also explains alot - www.colinandrews.net...

i believe it may be something to do with HAARP and experimental weather modification, i suspect you may have already thought of this, this is just my 2 cents worth.

peace

www.wunderground.com...

There is not a cloud in the sky in Houston. Uhm...

I dont know much about weather stuff, but heres an image from NWS.Link

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/7c1242821012.jpg[/atsimg]

Originally posted by Phage
Simplified, the radar stations are looking up at an angle. Close to the station it's looking at a lower level than more distant. What the circles represent is a layer at a particular range of altitudes.

I think what you are seeing is a thin (in depth) but dense and moist cloud layer covering the eastern half of the US.

edit on 10/13/2010 by Phage because: (no reason given)

Exactly what he said. In short each area is where the doppler stations are located and being that we have a dry pressure system moving through there isn't much moisture to pick up, matter of fact it's so faint that it shows really well close to the radar but the return is less the further away you get. A rain producing system would have so much reflectivity it will over shadow typical atmosphere noise like we are seeing now.

Notice in the first post the areas where we are actually having storm systems all the radar picks up is the storm cell. When there is no storm around you get that bubble look you see everywhere else the dry system is moving through.

Here is the latest Australian radar ,also shows a couple of swirling storms ,the reason i am posting this is it looks unusual to me as i watch this radar everyday.One of these storms is over Pine gap area the other around Woomera /Roxby Downs both of these areas have military ties.Maybe nothing but here it is anyway.
www.bom.gov.au...

It does look unusual but does have a simple answer. They are main Radar stations located throughout the country linked together. Their circular appearance is due to the range of the radar itself and a lack of coverage in between stations. The "Spoking" effect is caused by interference with the Radar station.

It is very common to see radar images like this. I believe 10 or 20 years ago, you always saw radar images like this towards evening but the radar images are cleaned up now so you may not see these images as often. It was explained to me on the regular news one night. I've seen where it was even explained how mass swarms of bugs can be picked up on radar. One explanation was that the radar was picking up ground clutter. That may have been a real quick simple explanation that may or may not have been correct.

reply to post by darklife


indeed something is going on. I recorded this earlier tonight, saw what looks like an orb over Wisconsin, and another over grand rapids michigian. if you go to www.wunderground.com and look in the areas, you still might see 2 small orbs sitting there.. but here is a link to one of my videos I put up on you tube, ive been trying to get answers all night like a chickin with its head cut off!! haha.


www.youtube.com...

reply to post by drummerguy30243


FYI, look up unusual weather pattern on youtube, they both will be there. hope they help.

Greetings from Scandinavia, where there is no "shadow goverments" or whatnot. You should simply learn the basics of weather radar technology and the atmosphere and what these two combined can produce in a radar image. Those kinds of things happen everywhere in the world, almost all the time. I just cannot see any effing reason for you to get all bent over about that?

EDIT: I work as a trained storm spotter for Finnish meteorogical institute, so i'd know since i rely on radar images for that. In the severe weather season like 24/7.

reply to post by darklife


Its doing this right now, its weird.

accuweather

Originally posted by darklife
So could someone please explain what causes this? Why all the radars in the US show these circles at the same time?

A bit of a stretch on the "all" statement but if you overlay the locations of NWS radars and the center of those circles they will match up -- minus all the other radars that are located elsewhere.

On the WSR-88D (NEXRAD Weather Radar) the radar runs through different programmed "sweeps" (VCPs) of the sky. The radar antenna will look at sections of elevation angles. After it does that section of the sky, it will go on to another section. This happens in "clear-air" mode and is basically searching for weather and is highly sensitive.

Under certain cloud cover and depending on the "pattern" (VCP) the radar is in, certain sections of the sky are only seen to a certain distance from the radar and what we get are these circles. Most likely the radar was in "precipitation" mode, but haven't looked at the data from NWS yet.

The best site I've seen online for this type of thing is found here:
NEXRAD Hoax

NEXRAD has been conspiracy fodder for 14 years; this site shows how it works and what each weird image is really showing. This first myth has been resurrected to a new internet age almost verbatim. The people who believe it seem to believe that a sincere but technically-challenged amateur is somehow able to better forecast severe weather better than the people who have actually gone to school, post-grad, and employment as experts.

You also should know that a national radar map is a mosaic of many different radar installations. Each uses different math (I think it's different algorithms) to overcome known obstacles and local issues. It takes time to get a good read from all feeds into a whole picture. During that time, you will get circles and even squares.

It's normal. And fascinating to learn about.

Got that two and a half years ago, just inverted:


It shows rainfall

The image was back to normal a few hours later.