In article ,
"Mike Murdock" wrote:
They refer to each scan as "base reflectivity", no matter what elevation the
radar is tilted to. The point is that the colors you see in your airplane
represent the highest level of all the different elevations scanned for that
area.


I'm not sure of the source of your information, since you didn't provide
a direct reference, and it doesn't seem to appear on the WxWorx web
site. Certainly, none of the information that WxWorx provides on their
web site confirms that a composite reflectivity image is provided, and
the information that you provide suggests that the image is a base
reflectivity image with some "educated guessing" involved in order to
attempt to paint a composite-like picture using some base reflectivity
data. However, I'm not a radar expert, so perhaps I'm misinterpreting
something along the way.

I have never put the WxWorx and NWS products side by side to see how
they compare. I would be interested to hear from anyone who has done
such a comparison. WxWorx seems to be somewhat guarded about the
details, or at least I haven't found a good source for the details yet.

I have heard that WxWorx does a pretty good job of painting the heavy
and severe stuff with yellows and reds, but I've personally had some
yellow cells sneak up on me all of a sudden in a sea of green. Seems
that echo tops (which I had turned off at the time) may have shown a
higher-level return before the cells actually painted yellow on the
NEXRAD image.



JKG