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What Nw Radar Settings Do You Use?


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Posted
  • Location: Hayward’s Heath - home, Brighton/East Grinstead - work.
  • Weather Preferences: Snow and storms
  • Location: Hayward’s Heath - home, Brighton/East Grinstead - work.

I realise that I use a variety of radar settings when looking at the radar.

My standard setting is NW new. However, when the rain gets really heavy then I change to NW original and put the lightning indicator on so that I can get an idea of the heaviest rates. The lightning was so bad that supercell day last month that I had to turn it back off just to see the radar!

I normally zoom in to the SE but zoom out when the action is further afield ( like today).

In winter, at the first sniff of snow I put on the type of precipitation filter and overlay with wind vectors and 850's.

When I know that it is definitely snow then I put up the traditional radar so that I can be ready to lamp post watch for that first grain

That is my favourite time for radar watching!

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Posted
  • Location: Derbyshire Peak District. 290 mts a.s.l.
  • Weather Preferences: Anything extreme
  • Location: Derbyshire Peak District. 290 mts a.s.l.

I tend to use the V4 with postcode zoom quite a lot but if there's any serious shower activity in the area, or any particularly heavy rain, then I switch to V6 with the original colour coding for rainfall intensity.

The V6 is remarkably accurate. I've know occasions when a really heavy shower is shown right over my area on the V4 but closer inspection on the V6 reveals it to be very close but no cigar.

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Posted
  • Location: Warminster, Wiltshire
  • Location: Warminster, Wiltshire

I generally use the V5 on NW Traditional mode with the precipitation smoothed (as I prefer that to pixelated) with postcode zoom, but am more and more using the new V6 as being able to zoom right in to see the town/village names - although the fact it is only available in pixelated form is a negative in my view.

On the V5 the accumulation facility is outstanding.

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Posted
  • Location: East Devon
  • Location: East Devon

I tend to use the NW Original colour scale most of the time, I think it shows the spread and intensity of precipitation the best with truly torrential downpours showing out well and it being easy to see rainfall rates, and good choice of colours too. I'm probably just more used to it too. I do also flick to different scales at times to see what things look like in other scales.

I also usually have the lightning detector switched on most of the time (don't tend to remember it's on when there's no lightning around), but on days like today I tend to flick it on and off so I can see the actual rainfall intensities.

I used to use the V4 version more for a while after the V6 version came out but now I tend to use the V6 nearly all the time as it tends to work better and more smoothly with me now. I often look at the country as a whole and zoom to areas of interes (e.g the storm over Norfolk at the moment, and make me with I was there!) or my location of course if there's interest there.

I've always tended to use the pixelated version for some reason, as I prefer what the actual 'raw' radar image showed and the smoothed radar tends to 'inflate' showers and rain a bit.

I tend not to rely on the precip type too much in winter though sometimes have a look, and use general weather observations more as the precip type is not actually detected just more of a estimate by a computer.

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