There are three issues here:
- What is RainViewer data
- What is HRRR Composite radar
- Understanding the weather
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RainViewer is real MEASURED data so it’s only history up to about 10 minutes prior to now. Radar are slices through the atmosphere.
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HRRR Radar is PREDICTED forward from measured radar. The 1km and 4km radar is similar to a measured radar slice. Composite is merged many slices together. Don’t quote me on this. This is my understanding and can be wrong.
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Understanding weather - Shux man - I would not go out in that. That was a bad decision.
- high pressure systems are stable and easy to predict.
- low pressure systems are unstable and hard to predict.
- storms fronts are very hard to predict and can change quickly
- tornadoes are the extreme…
If you see the strong storm front, expect it to hit but how it hits can change. This is the big picture thing. When you have a lot of water falling it displaces air and you get massive wind gusts. Where water falls will affect the surrounding area, wind in the terrain and where more rain will fall. This is a complex system. Hard to predict. Treat storm weather with respect even if you have a good understanding of weather. Storm chasers treat weather with respect.
A similar example of predictions are waves on a bay. On a nice calm day (high pressure) with a nice swell, the small waves are easy to predict. In a storm (low pressure), you can see the waves coming, but it hard to predict where they will break and how waves and wind will affect other waves.
When viewing weather predictions, think of it in probabilities, i.e., rain plus or minus something. “something” in stable high pressure systems is small. “something” in unstable low pressure systems is big. Essentially blur your vision.
To understand this more. Add “hurricane tracks” and look at the two systems in the pacific and read the “Hurricane tracks” help. This is the variation (plus or minus) for these storms. These are relatively tight tracks. When the storm is in the Caribbean, the tracks can vary more because there are more features that can affect the storm path. Just from looking at the map, it looks like your region has many features that can affect a local storm.
I’ll throw in my disclaimer. I am not a meteorologist so don’t quote me on the weather stuff. This is my understanding from snippets Ive seen over the years developing Flowx. I took no formal course on weather. But I do have a background in physics and numerical methods and modelling so I understand the abilities and limitations of simulations.
Cheers, Duane.