Strengths

Like all MRMS products, the use of multiple radars is more robust than single-site radar alone. It provides faster updates and helps the forecaster integrate data from multiple radars. It also compensates for cone-of-silence, beam broadening at far ranges, and terrain blockage.

Limitations

The composite reflectivity value is not identified. You must refer to the “Composite Reflectivity” product for this information.

Quality Control

This product is derived from the 3D Reflectivity Cube, which means non-hydrometeorological data has been removed including: Ground clutter, anomalous propagation (AP), chaff, interference spikes, and bioscatterers (e.g., angels and ghosts). However, bright band contamination (i.e., anomalously-high reflectivity caused by melting snowflakes) remains.

Applications

Useful for tactical and short-term strategic decisions about air traffic routing.

Example Images

Fig. 1: Composite Reflectivity Height (km) on 02 February 2014 at 1936 UTC.