Live Radar Corridor
Near-term Convective Watch now pairs model thunderstorm risk with live radar along your route — so you can see what the atmosphere supports and what’s actually lighting up on the scope right now.
Radar can soften a model thunderstorm deduction — never add one
When the models forecast widespread convection along your route but radar has actually looked at that corridor and found it quiet, the route-coverage thunderstorm deduction is reduced and the line in your score breakdown says so, along with how old the radar image was.
Radar only ever moves that one deduction, and only downward. Convective SIGMETs, TAF and METAR thunderstorm reports, probability groups, and every hard limit from your personal minimums are untouched — if a ceiling or a NOTAM has already grounded the flight, a quiet radar corridor cannot undo it.
What Has To Be True Before Radar Counts
Radar is an observation of now, but you reach most of your route later. Four things have to hold before a quiet corridor is allowed to reduce anything:
- 1.The image is fresh. Reflectivity older than 20 minutes is not a nowcast, and nothing is reduced.
- 2.Radar actually saw most of your route. On a long leg the radar window only reaches the first stretch. If it has assessed less than 70% of your route points, it does not get to vouch for the rest — the models keep the call.
- 3.Storms that could move onto your path are counted. Each point is checked over a widening cone rather than a fixed circle, sized by how far a storm could travel before you get there. A cell 40 nm off-route with 90 minutes of lead time still blocks the reduction.
- 4.The stretch radar could not see still counts against you. Whatever the models forecast beyond the radar horizon sets a floor, so a quiet corridor next to a widespread forecast out ahead earns nothing.
A tall, intense cell also puts a brake on it: when radar shows a 50 dBZ core reaching roughly 30,000 ft, the reduction is limited even if coverage looks sparse, because a storm with that kind of updraft tends to grow and spawn new cells.
Why This Exists
Model soundings answer “could storms fire?” Live radar answers “are they firing on my path right now?” Those can disagree — a loaded-gun atmosphere with a quiet corridor, or active cells where CAPE looked modest. Convective Watch now shows both so you don’t have to reconcile them yourself.
PlaneWX samples NOAA’s Multi-Radar/Multi-Sensor (MRMS) mosaic along a corridor around your route, then overlays that observational nowcast on the same segment bar you already use for model threat. When the two disagree and radar is the more credible of the pair, it can also soften the model’s thunderstorm deduction — see below.
When Radar Appears
Radar is a nowcast, not a day-3 forecast. PlaneWX attaches corridor radar when:
- Part of your flight falls inside roughly the next 2 hours (data age + time to each waypoint)
- The route has MRMS coverage (CONUS and nearby areas with mosaic data)
- Fresh mosaic data is available (typically refreshed every few minutes)
For departures farther out, you’ll still see model Convective Watch — radar simply isn’t meaningful that far ahead. On near-term flights, Visual Mode also leads with a Live radar (Windy) slide for situational awareness (that mosaic is separate from the MRMS corridor sample used in Convective Watch).
Reading Dual Badges & the Segment Bar
Model: … · Radar: …
Two badges summarize coverage language you already know — quiet / isolated / scattered / widespread. Model is atmospheric potential (CAPE and related indices). Radar is what MRMS sees along the corridor right now. They can match or disagree; both are intentional.
The Radar badge reflects observed corridor intensity on the mosaic. Scoring still uses the wider motion cone (cells that could still reach your path before you get there). So you can see a quieter observed badge while the score remains cautious because off-route cells remain inside the lead-time cone — or the reverse when the corridor itself is hot.
Status strip
A short line under the badges (e.g. “Radar corridor: Widespread · max 58 dBZ · 5 min old”) tells you peak reflectivity, whether lightning was observed, and how fresh the mosaic is.
Hybrid segment bar
Solid segments are driven by live radar. Hatched / gray segments are model-only (beyond the radar time window). Hover a segment for dBZ and distance from departure.
Radar Color Legend (dBZ)
Bar colors follow the four intensity bands ATC uses when describing precipitation (Light / Moderate / Heavy / Extreme), with the green–yellow–red–pink look pilots expect from NEXRAD-style mosaics:
Light
< 30 dBZ
Moderate
30–40 dBZ
Heavy
40–50 dBZ
Extreme
≥ 50 dBZ
Coverage words on the badges (scattered / widespread) are about how much of the corridor is affected. Bar colors are about how strong the return is at each sample. A widespread light rain can stay green/yellow; a single extreme core can show pink on one segment.
Spotting a Radar Reduction in Your Score Breakdown
When radar softens a deduction, the line says so in place. Open Score Breakdown and look for wording appended to the thunderstorm line:
−10 Widespread convective activity along route (5/5 segments affected) [reduced to -10: live radar shows isolated coverage along the route corridor as of 4 min ago]
The original reason stays intact so you can see what the models said, and the bracket tells you what changed, why, and how old the radar image was when we used it. If that age looks stale to you, weigh the line accordingly — the point of printing it is so you can second-guess us.
If you ever see a score move without a bracket like this on the thunderstorm line, that is a bug worth reporting — a radar reduction is never allowed to be silent.
How Wide Is the Corridor?
It widens as you go. Near the aircraft radar samples a tight band of about ±10 NM around your path — what you’d actually fly through. Further down the route the band grows, because you don’t reach those points for another hour or more and a storm can travel a long way in that time. By the far end of a longer leg it can reach 40–60 NM either side.
That is deliberate. A cell sitting 40 NM off-route right now is genuinely irrelevant if you pass that point in ten minutes, and genuinely relevant if you pass it in ninety. The band is sized by how far convection could travel before you arrive, so “quiet” means nothing that could reach you has been found — not merely that the exact point is clear this instant.
It also never leaves gaps. On a long leg the sampled points can be 60–100 NM apart, so the band is always at least wide enough for neighbouring samples to touch. Storms well off-route can still appear on regional mosaics or inside SIGMET polygons without making your corridor “widespread” — that is expected.
SIGMETs and WPC/SPC outlooks still describe the broader picture. If radar is quiet but a convective SIGMET is active nearby, trust the advisory for hazard language and treat radar as “not on the path yet.”
Where to Find It in the Briefing
- Convective Watch — dual badges, status strip, hybrid bar, and dBZ legend
- Weather Sources → Current — MRMS Radar card with corridor summary and data age
- Visual Mode (near-term departures) — Live radar (Windy) as the first slide
- Narrative / The Pattern — when radar is attached, the briefing text can reference the observational nowcast alongside CAPE and SIGMETs