StormLab 4.0 Help Documents

Introduction

StormLab 4.0 represents a revolutionary upgrade to our flagship Doppler radar software, continuing our goal to provide affordable, state-of-the-art weather software for your PC. StormLab turns any Internet connection into an automated and full customizable display system for National Weather Service Doppler weather radar. You will have real-time access to reflectivity, velocity, storm relative velocity, VAD Wind Profiles, precipitation estimates, storm cell data, and MUCH more, including new high resolution Level 2 data. StormLab's full-featured interface includes looping, panning, zooming, and overlays of geographic and weather data! StormLab is also fully GIS compatible, allowing users to display radar data right down to street level. Complete GPS integration allows mobile storm spotters or those on everyday travel to see their current position plotted right on the radar scope. Whether it's the color of the radar data or the size of cities, everything is customizable using an intuitive and easy-to-use graphical interface. StormLab 4.0 is perfect for on-air presentation, but at a fraction of the cost of typical TV radar display software. Why settle for anything less than software written by meteorologists.

StormLab Control Panel

When you first start StormLab from the desktop icon, you will see the main StormLab control panel. This window serves as the main interface from which you can load real-time or archived <LINK HERE> radar data already stored on your PC. Once radar data has been loaded, this control panel can be minimized.

On many of the StormLab windows, you will note this icon

. Clicking it will bring you to a designated help page just like this one! Also, many features in the software are exclusive to the Supercharged version. The help documents will denote such features with this icon.

You can load radar data with StormLab right out-of-the-box, but remember that StormLab is highly customizable to your liking. We'll discuss enhancing StormLab a bit further down, but do note the Setup <LINK HERE> menu option at the top of the control panel which will be used for this purpose. Another new featuretoV4.0istheabilitytobookmark<LINKHERE> radar data that you view most often. These can even be automatically launched at startup, making StormLab a completely hands-off solution for those users in using the software as a weather/security monitoring tool. More on this later. Let's first take a look at the control panel and see how easy it is to view National Weather Service Doppler radar data.

Viewing Live Radar Data

On the left hand side of the control panel is a tree containing every Doppler radar site, organized by state. To find the site closest to you, a map is available by clicking the "Find Nearest Radar" option under the Help menu. Selecting a radar site will place a checkmark along side it while turning the text bold so that you know it is active (see pictured example). In addition to individual Doppler Radar data, StormLab also provides access to a national and regional overviews (courtesy of WeatherUnderground) as well as Canadian radar imagery. Both of these data sets will load simply by clicking the appropriate link from the left hand listing.

Step 1.) Left click and highlight a radar site

Once you select a radar site, next select how many images you would like in your loop. The time span of this loop depends on the mode the radar is operating in (4 to 10 minutes between each scan), with the default value (12 frames) covering an average of an hour's worth of radar data.

Step 2.) Select the number of images you would like in your loop (or check the Single Frame box).

Next, you will need to select a radar product. StormLab provides the full suite of radar products generated by each Doppler radar site. You will note there are many many more products than you're used to seeing on TV or the Internet, so we'll describe each one briefly below. This data is free to you and there is no charge to access it through StormLab. You will also notice a second radio button labeled "Level 2 (Hi-Res) data". For those of you who have upgraded to StormLab Supercharged, you will also have optional access to hi resolution Level 2 radar data, which provides users with better spatial, vertical and data resolution. Subscription or other service based feeds are required to access Level 2 data, with StormLab fully able to integrate and display these data.

Step 3.) Left mouse click the radar product you wish to display.

Radar Product Choices:

Reflectivity - This is the product that is most commonly displayed on TV or the Internet, usually at the base, or 0.5 degrees tilt. As the radar spins around, it sends out thousands of energy pulses. Reflecitivty is simply the amount of energy returned back to the radar from whatever it hits in the air -- rain, hail, snow, dust, and even insects. The higher the water/ice content in the object, the more power that gets returned to the radar. Units are logarithmic (dBZ) and various scales may be used to display these values depending on whether the radar is in clear air or precipitation/storm mode. Reflecitivty imagery is usually color coded so that cool colors refer to light precipitation, and hot colors (reds, purples) infer very heavy rainfall or hail. Please note that the radar has no ability to determine between rain or snow. Radar imagery color coded by precipitation type is often wrong, and estimated based on surface weather reports and current air temperatures. You'll note that StormLab provided several vertical tilts for reflectivity data since the radar also scans the sky vertically to give meteorologists a 3-dimensional view of storms. The lowest tilt (0.5 degrees) is what is most commonly displayed, although higher tilts are used by National Weather Service meteorologists to look for things like developing hail or downbursts.

Composite (Reflectivity) - Same as above, except instead of viewing the reflectivity at one vertical elevation, this image displays the MAXIMUM reflectivity value detected by the radar for a given location (regardless of the elevation). Basically, if you were standing 30 miles east of the radar, and above you, the radar sampled dBZ values of 5, 25, 30, 34, 52, 40, 37, and 22 at different heights...the image would display 52 dBZ for the composite reflectivity at your location. Used to show the most intense storms and hail cores aloft. Used by radar operators as more of a "catch all" as it is the last product received per volume scan (one complete radar sweep of the atmosphere). This image is also accompanied for the Storm Cell Attributes Table. Click here for more info.

Velocity - The most important feature of Doppler radar is the 'Doppler', or its ability to detect the air motion in areas of precipitation. Doppler radar can detect winds blowing toward or away from the radar, called Radial Velocity. like reflectivity, this product is available at several elevation slices. NOTE: The radar can again only detect that portion of the wind which is blowing along the radar beam. For example, if you are looking due south from the radar, and the wind was blowing from the west or east at even 80 mph, the radar would see 0 knots because the wind is blowing perpendicular to the beam. Also note that the radar beam extends higher and higher the farther you go from the radar. Novice users often mistake high winds aloft (fairly common) for strong winds at the surface. Velocity imagery can take years of experience to master and can fool even the most experienced.

SRM - Stands for "Storm Relative Motion". Same as above except the average movement of the storms (or a value entered by the National Weather Service radar operator) is subtracted out. By subtracted out the forward storm motion, the wind field relative to a storm of interest can be observed. This is used to detect storm scale rotation or other features which could signify the onset of very large hail, a downburst, or possibly a tornado.

Precipitation - A great benefit of Doppler radar is its ability to estimate fallen precipitation, in order to fill in the holes left by observation networks, automated rain gages, and other sources of data. Measured in inches, Doppler Radar can estimate precipitation that has fallen over the past hour, three hours, and storm total. Note the beginning and ending times on the storm total imagery. The radar requires several hours of no precipitation before resetting, and areas that receive a lot of rainfall can have this image piling up for days if not weeks! Also note that precipitation can be severely overestimated due to storms which contain hail and the freezing level, as partially melted ice returns an extremely high reflectivity.

Layer Reflectivity Maximum - More of a use for pilots, this product is a coarse resolution image (4km grid) which provide the maximum reflectivity at different layers in the atmosphere: lower, middle and upper. Similar to the composite reflectivity, but broken down into 3 layers and of a poorer resolution.

VIL - Vertically Integrated Liquid. A coarse resolution image that is basically a measure of the total estimated liquid in a vertical sense, in units kilograms per square meter. Most used to identify storms with heavy rainfall or the possibility large hail. Can also be used in combination with other products to predict the onset of downbursts.

Echo Tops - Simply an image depicting the estimate of storm cloud tops. Note that depending on the tilt of the radar beam and distance from the radar, these can be over or under-estimated on the order of 5-10,000 feet or more. Very useful in detecting severe storms that amass to great heights.

88D Text Message - In the event of a radar outage, software upgrade, or other significant mode change, the NWS in charge of that radar will send out a message explaining the problem or change.

Viewing Level 2 Radar Data

New to StormLab 4.0, and an exclusive feature to the Supercharged version, is real-time access to hi-resolution Level 2 radar data. In addition to the stanard resolution products provided at no charge to StormLab users, we are now offering display capabilities for higher resolution data available through subscription or university data services (e.g. http://www.allisonhouse.com)

Level 2 data is essentially the raw data from the National Weather Service Doppler radars, providing you will a full suite of elevation tilts as well as improved data resolution. For example, Level 2 reflectivity data will be displayed at 0.5 dBZ intervals and Level 2 velocity data will be displayed at 1 knot intervals with a 0.25km spatial resolution (as opposed to 1km in the standard velocity products). You will also notice the slider bar in the example to the right for storm motion and speed. StormLab 4.0 provides a unique capability where the user can generate storm relative velocity imagery and change the storm motion on-the-fly!

One data is displayed you will have full access to switch among the available elevation tilts and all four data types (reflectivity, velocity, storm relative velocity and spectrum width)

Bookmarks

New to StormLab 4.0 is the ability to bookmark your most often loaded radar sites. The window to the left will appear by clicking the Modify Bookmarks option from the "Bookmark" menu on the StormLab Control Panel.

Using the pull-down menus at the button, select the radar site, product and loop size you wish to bookmark. If you'd like this product to automatically load when you start StormLab, check the Auto-Load on Startup box. When you're all set, click the Add button.

Double click a row in the grid at the top to make edits or delete an entry. You can also use the arrow buttons to re-order your bookmarks.

Click the "X" in the top right to exit the editor.

Viewing Archived Data

The data you view in StormLab is saved to your hard drive (and can be purged through the Program Settings section of the Setup window).

In addition, radar data can be downloaded from the National Climatic Data Center website and converted to StormLab using a conversion utility available for purchase.

StormLab has a unique ability to view stored data as well as current data, making it a great tool for those doing research, analysis, or even putting together a movie or montage to go with your storm chase video!

To view or download archived data, simply click the Archive Viewer tab on the StormLab control panel. Data are organized in folders by the 4-letter radar site identifier and the product type. Files are then stored with a date/time stamp in Greenwich Mean Time. For example, the first highlighted file to the right 200705282348.keax in the keax Reflecitivty1 folder is the 0.5 degree reflecitivty product for keax (Kansas City, MO), stored at 2348 GMT (648PM CDT) on May 28th, 2007.

To view archived data, simply select the files you wish to view and click "Load"