The NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) National Weather Service is responsible for monitoring the weather throughout the country. They track weather and climate trends as well as current conditions. There are a series of NOAA weather radars that help them do their job.

NOAA weather radars use NEXRAD or Next Generation Radar to gather data that will help us understand current and future weather conditions. There are four types of images that come about because of this technology. These are base reflectivity, composite reflectivity, one-hour precipitation and storm total precipitation.

Base reflectivity measures the strength of the signal that is reflected back to the antennae. From this, you can spot any precipitation, understand and measure a storm