this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2024
19 points (95.2% liked)

Weather and Meteorology

175 readers
2 users here now

Hope to expand on this later. A community for discussing the weather (very UK), amateur meteorology, and moaning it's too hot/cold/wet/dry/mild.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

A bug in the matrix or just the radar? This is no normal cloud-shape, is it?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] Umbrias@beehaw.org 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

what a roller coaster, and the ominous unexplained insect edit is a cherryon top

[โ€“] wren 1 points 3 months ago

aha here's a full explanation of the thought process:

  • no other weather report matches these patterns
  • they're suspiciously round and not blobby like real clouds
  • they're each suspiciously localised around the radars in the network
  • there are lots of types of radar artefacts, including close-to-radar ground-clutter (this is what I assumed it was) but it's too consistent and large of a signal for that
  • so it must be something uniform, in the air instead of on the ground, that isn't rain
  • bugs are about the size of a big rain drop! enough to be picked up as a strong signal by the radar and enough to prevent the radar from seeing long distances
  • It's also been flying-ant-day recently across Europe