"Jay Honeck" wrote

After answering your post, I headed off to a wedding -- and drove
right toward the most ominous-looking storm front I've seen this year.

The whole time I was thinking "Great, Barry WARNED me about the
tornado, and here I am driving right *toward* it...."

:-)

It turned out to contain torrential rains, but little else. Not even
any lightning...thankfully.

I happened to be doing some Weather Channel interactive radar map surfing,
right after that post, and took a look at the nation wide activity.

I noticed some activity in Iowa, so I zoomed in on the Iowa City area, and
saw those radar returns.

It showed as green, with some widespread areas of yellow, with some darker
orange mixed in for good measure. It did look like a mess, but I didn't
look like there were any hook echoes, so I didn't shout back at you...

That interactive radar is some neat stuff. You can zoom right down to the
level of visually locating the hotel buildings. You have to zoom back out
some, to see the radar overlay, but you can center the building on the
bull's eye, then zoom out and see exactly what is in your area, and animate
it, and see the time index, to see how recent the image is.

I did that on my house one day when a cell was moving over. It was as
accurate and as close to real time as a person can expect to get, for free.
:-)
--
Jim in NC