Radarscope users, I have a question

You probably need the Pro version that is geared to meteorologists.

Pro version has a bunch of tweaking ability that only meteorologists know WTF each setting does. Its straight up like this gif:


What I would do is find a local metoerologist that is responsive on Twitter and ask there.

Radar picks up smoke from wildfires all the time. The normal radar tool is showing rain that’s not there around around Ft Collins and Cheyenne. That must be smoke.

Correlation Coefficient is a tool that can be used, but it‘s well beyond my knowledge of how to use it in regards to smoke. You might want to play around with it to see if it works.

You'll be wanting to use some dual-pol features to confirm the smoke.

Correlation Coefficient is the first one I'd go to. It's basically asking how alike the shapes are that the radar beam is hitting in the area. Smoke should have different sizes and shapes of particles in it, and show up as having a low CC (blue colors).

Differential Reflectivity is the next one to check. It's asking how much bigger is the shape of what it's hitting in the horizontal vs the vertical. Raindrops are fatter than they are tall when falling and this shows up as a positive value. With smoke, you expect different shapes and should see all sorts of positive, zero, and even less than zero returns.

Additionally you can check the spectrum width product. Brighter colors = turbulence. Smoke should be quite turbulent throughout since it's got a hell of a heating source to drive rapid convection. So light green reflectivity with a lot of yellows and purples and the SW would also be suggestive of smoke.

Hope that helps.