Hello IFC:
Today I bring you something alot of people probably don’t know. I am going to explain how to read the symbols and signs on a radar overlay on ForeFlIght. As we all know, ForeFlight is an app that real world pilots and hard core simmers use to help navigate, pull up charts, etc. In this ForeFlight “tutorial”, I took a screenshot of the radar on Foreflight and circled each symbol in a different ink pen to explain it.
As you can see, here is a snippet of that current radar in North Texas, Northern Louisiana, and a good majority of Arkansas. So, lets start explaining what this all means.
The main radar
What is the main radar? The main radar is all of the greens, yellows, oranges, reds, pinks, purples, and sometimes whites on the radar. These colors depict how heavy the precipitation is. The green is light, yellow is moderate, red is heavy/severe, pink,purple and white is all extreme precipitation.
Black Circles
Do you see the black circles I drew on the radar? Yes? Cool! Those numbers show how high (in feet MSL) that part of the storm is or how high the tops of the clouds are. As you can see, they range from 20,500 feet (FL205) to 37,500 feet (FL375) to 44,700 feet (FL447). The higher numbers can usually be found were the precipitation is heavier.
Blue Circles
Do you see the Blue circles I drew on the radar? Yes? Cool! Those circles show were the lighting in the storm is and how frequent it is. You can tell it is lighting by the lighting shaped symbol.
White Circles
Do you see the White circles I drew on the radar? Yes? Cool! Those circles show were the storm is rotating. It is really self explanatory. If someone else wants to add details, they can
Red Circles
Do you see the Red circles I drew on the radar? Yes? Cool! Those circles show were there is frozen precipitation falling to the ground. It could be anything but it is most usually hail coming from the thunderstorm.
I hope you enjoyed this little ForeFlight tutorial.
N1RG