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James Weston Gandee '05 site.

Weather : Signatures on radar : Hook Echo / tornado.

Hook echo's are a hook-shaped structure seen on radar that depicts that there is twisting-of-the-winds taking place within a supper-cell or bow echo-thunderstorm.

The black curves depict that there is dry-air entering into the upper base of the hook that gives a 3-D wrap-around of the winds.

Level II Archive tapes from the WSR-1989 have been recorded for over a decide and no real way of viewing all the layers of data until now.

ViPiR (Shown above) stands for Volumetric imaging and integrated radar, now a real-time data instrument used in a growing number of television stations. Out since 1996, ViPiR can also show algorithms or alarms triggered by the velocity, also called DTW (Dangerous twisting of the winds) markers to give advance notice of a funnel forming.

ViPiR in-itself is not a radar, just a mass-data viewer, the source of the radar - data is oftentimes the wide network of WSR (Weather Surveillance radar) or called NEXRAD (Next generation of radar)

Stations in NC with ViPiR.. WCNC (Charlotte - cable 6) 36 on your UHF dial Charlotte , other stations out-side NC, are WSLS 10 in Roanoke VA. , WBRC in Birmingham, AL (FOX 6)

Using a number of features at once here, ViPiR, shown above is showing all "Red and values above - pixels" , isolating all other pixels, called data dropout can make three-dimensional viewing easier, showing only the strongest part of the storm. Also, there are two layers of radar more-less stacked on top of each other helps where the lower layer is too close to the radar to show all of the cell, another radar a few miles away is used to see in the unseen area in the layer below as well as seeing even higher into the storm for seeing rotation, shown in the Yellow circles meaning there is rotation starting in the storm and at many heights.