MYSTERY SOLVED: What causes the ‘storm ghosting’ images on Willis Is weather radar

WEIRD IMAGES

David Gardiner

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A strange ‘storm ghosting’ pattern often seen on the BoM Willis Is weather radar. Picture: Weatherzone

It has been stirring the curiosity of avid weather watchers and enthusiasts for months: what is the strange ‘ghost’ like pattern on the Willis Island weather radar?

The remote sand cay about 450 kilometres east of Port Douglas is home to an official Bureau of Meteorology weather station, including a rain radar, and four BoM staff who work and live there.

The Willis Island radar’s images are often among the first we see of cyclones approaching the far north including the Douglas coastline, and was a key point of real-time monitoring in the earlier stages of Cyclone Jasper last December.

Willis Island, home of Australia’s most remote weather station. Picture: Bureau of Meteorology

But over recent months the radar has been producing some strange patterns that some readers and users of social media have even thought was an off-season cyclone.

Newsport asked the BoM for an explanation about the storm-like images, which they can confirm, are definitely not a weather phenomenon, but rather a sort of technical ‘illusion’.

“These rain patterns or 'storm ghosting' images are an artefact caused by the way the web-based images are generated under some specific meteorological conditions,” a BoM spokesperson told us.  

What has appeared to be a large rain pattern or storm on the Willis Island radar, is in fact the images of other atmospheric and meteorological conditions (possibly also moist, but not rain) in the radar’s fairly close range.

“This is more prevalent in flat areas, where the signal is sitting around the same level that the web-based images are looking, and there can be a lot of return echoes.”

Radar offline 

In the meantime, there has been a technical issue with the Willis Island radar, resulting in the BoM having to take it offline until the problems are fixed. 

“The Willis Island radar is currently operational and sending data out, however a banner (‘this radar is currently out of service’)  remains on the website due to telecommunications issues which are causing intermittent dropouts,” the spokesperson said. 

“The Bureau is in contact with telecommunications providers to try and resolve this issue. 

“We hope to have the telecommunications issue resolved by the end of the week. Once the issue is resolved we will remove the website banner.”

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