Radar - July 8, 2017


Radar showed the main action of the forecast cold front chugging eastward. I was surprised to notice a focus of activity that appeared AHEAD(?) of the front near the Connecticut River around Northampton/Amherst. At 12:17, the feature 'exploded' to a red color on Radar. At first I assumed the Radar feature reflected topography-induced orographic effects of the Mt. Tom and Holyoke ranges. Closer inspection suggested that the Radar feature was much farther north than those ranges. I thought maybe the Pocumtucks... But looking at 'reference' maps I downloaded from an excellent Web resource, CalTopo.com, I concluded tentatively that it was the Mt. Sugarloaf to Mt. Toby axis that focused the event. What do you think? The 3 'reference' maps are provided below.

It appeared that the 'anomalous' Radar feature that seemed to me to be ahead of the front was incorporated into the main cold-front action as it approached. I captured the radar sequence thru much of the afternoon as the cold front activity ambled eastward.

The Radar sequence is an animated .GIF. It should animate when you open it using your Web browser. If your computer setting specifies that .GIFs are opened in another program, it may not animate, depending on the capabilities of the other program. If this happens to you, you can probably get around it by saving the Radar.gif file to your computer and then, in your Web browser (I use FireFox) do a File/Open to open Radar.gif from wherever you saved it.

The animated .GIF is set to loop. If you don't want to wait thru the afternoon-worth of Radar frames, clicking the 'refresh' button while the animation is running should instantly restart it at the beginning.


Radar.gif
Reference Map 1

Reference Map 2
Reference Map 3

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