Typically how often is radar map updated on Weather Apps?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I love my local KATV weather app. The weather radar map is so detailed. We just had a major thunderstorm. I zoomed in on my city and could see some areas in green (light rain) and other areas in yellow (moderate) and even heavy red areas of rain.

Theres a big green section 2 streets over from my house. We’re currently in yellow and it’s raining pretty hard. That’s so awesome to get this detailed info.

Got my first major alert too. Flash flooding. The phone almost vibrated out of my hand letting me know and I got a pop up alert box. Pretty intense storm. I’m on generator now. Power went out thirty mins ago.

How often do these radar maps get updated? Anyway to find out for sure?

I know anytime I close the App it reloads when I open it again. But it could still be getting the same radar map from a few minutes earlier. I just don’t know.

2

Now it shows no rain in the blocks around my house.

But big green areas of rain a half mile away. (All around me) We’re the hole in the doughnut. LOL

I always known it can rain in one part of town and not another. Experienced it many times driving in and out of rain. It’s very interesting to see these rain areas mapped out.

3

I don’t know the answer to your specific question, but I was fascinated a week or so ago when I was watching The Weather Channel during a severe storm outbreak in the midwest. They were tracking what they believed to be a tornado, and they weren’t just identifying neighborhoods, but the specific streets the twister was passing over, and how many minutes it would be until it got to the next major road.

Weather science is cool, so long as your home isn’t being destroyed by it.

4

The weather app is one of the factors that made me interested in getting a smart phone. I’d seen other people using them during storms.

I want to drive around one day and drive in/out of a few rain areas. See how accurate the radar map is. I’ll wait until a day when it’s only light or medium rain.

5

on Intellicast, the radar image is timed in 15 minute increments. On TV, I think it is updated with every sweep of the radar.

6

Wikipedia gives 4.5 minutes as the fastest current scan time for the NEXRAD - WSR88D radar system. It also says there’s an update due in 2017 that will drop that time to 4.15 minutes.

I would suggest that those limits are the fastest an app could update. I use RadarNow, and it seems that about every 5 minutes is the fastest it updates.

7

That sounds about what I’m seeing. Every 5 mins or so. Maybe a little longer.

I checked my TV stations weather app settings and there isn’t any options to set how often the radar map updates.

My weather app is configured for our local area. I’ll try RadarNow too.