All of these caveats must be taken into consideration when viewing nearly all radar data. Wind farms) to avoid a loss of data in critical areas resulting in 'hotspots'.

A study of convection capped by a stable layer using Doppler radar and acoustic echo sounders. Conversely, some non-meteorlogical returns may be omitted from this post-processing clean-up (Ex. University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. This post-processing is unique to each radar site and may result in some 'blindspots'. The NOWRAD Radar Summary maps are meant to help you track storms more quickly and accurately. What we display is Level 3 radar data which means it has been post-processed to reduce or remove some but not all of these sorts of returns. The Current Radar map shows areas of current precipitation. As such, raw weather radar data is characteristically noisy given how common these types of interference are. Among others, the radar can also see returns from non-meteorological objects such as birds, bugs, dust, terrain, buildings, and other sources of radio waves at similar frequencies. However these are not the only objects that will reflect the radar signal. Meteorological targets would include objects like rain, snow, and hail. Reflectivity, put simply is the amount of return that the radar sees at a given azimuth and range.

Radar operates by sending out a radio wave pulse that will interact with objects and 'reflect' some portion of that signal back to the radar reciever. Base reflectivity is the most basic of all NEXRAD products and can be used to illustrate some fundamental principles.

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