Rochester, N.Y. – If you have ever driven along the New York State Thruway heading towards Buffalo, you may have seen the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Doppler radar system. This is located close to the Buffalo Airport and its dome shape is visually very distinctive. It is a multimillion-dollar weather tool that the News10NBC meteorologists use on a regular basis. I have been fortunate to be inside the Buffalo Doppler radar and it is impressive!

Inside the dome is an antenna that spins horizontally scanning 360 degrees. It also has a vertical component which covers a majority of the atmosphere when necessary. It is a significant meteorological tool that is used just about every day. The principle of how it works is very simple. It sends out a pulse of energy, that is the outgoing wave, in order to find meteorological targets such as a raindrop or a snowflake. That signal then bounces off the target and returns to the radar. This signal is the return wave.  Basically, the radar is a transmitter and a receiver waiting to “hear” an echo.

But for all of the great technology, there are limitations. Sometimes the radar indicates there is precipitation in our area, but in reality, the precipitation is evaporating before reaching the ground. On other occasions, as the radar signal propagates over a greater distance the pulse of energy will shoot over the top of lake effect snow (lake snow can be very low to the ground).  As a result, this misses the lake effect snow and shows us nothing on the radar.  Also, in very cold temperatures the lake snow can be very dry and powdery which makes for a very poor target for the radar. Unfortunately, this also does not provide much “reflectivity”.

As they say, “seeing is believing,” but verification is still the best way to observe the weather.