Radar question

[Justin McGinley]

I am wondering how do they determine the speed of the storms off the Doppler radar?

 

[Patrick Marsh]

You take the feature of interest (i.e., mesocyclone, gust front, etc) or if you want the entire storm, use the centroid, and track that. Thus, if you know the location of the feature/centroid 30 minutes ago, and you know it now, you can compute the distance it traveled over that 30 minutes, divide by the time elapsed (30 minutes in this case), and you'll be left with a speed. This is the storm speed.

 

[John Wetter]

Justin, I assume you mean forward speed of the storm? If so, then Patrick answered. Or, do you mean the wind speeds within the storm?

 

[Justin McGinley]

forward speed of the storm and thanks patrick!!!