I woke up early today and decided to take a quick flight. The weather looked gray but the clouds were high and it was not yet too hot. Out West of town there was a line of rain showing on radar. There was big rain with Claudette battering Mississippi and Alabama but just light stuff nearby. It was a mix of green and yellow about 40 miles West so I went exploring.
The three sources of weather I have all use different color codes for different intensity. Basically green, yellow, red, magenta signify rain in increasing intensity but the line between each is different for each display. A good rule is avoid all red and magenta. Green is fine on all scales and yellow depends. On XM yellow is usually fine and equates to dark green on ADSB.
Today as I approached the line, my active radar was painting it as mostly green aligning with the ADSB while the XM was showing more yellow. The lightest green can often be just cloud without rain but today it was light rain.
I flew up to the first drops on the windshield. Not wanting to beat up the paint, I turned around and headed home without exploring more. It was another good lesson in interpreting the multitude of data sources.
As I type this, the current picture shows green above me but no rain. Is it now wrong? Probably not, it is likely raining up high but the rain is not reaching the ground but rather evaporating on the way down.
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