Bugtrails!!

[MikeC]

Apparently massive swarms of small insects can be picked up on radar - I don't think I've ever heard of this before!!

 

[brent_brent]

Smoke and birds can be picked up on radar so I can see why massive swarms of bugs couldn't be?

 

[Cairenn]

The morning that Columbia broke up, they were tracking the debris by radar

 

[Jay Reynolds]

http://www.pems.adfa.edu.au/~s9104004/trews/ww_re_hp.htm

 

[scombrid]

Weather radar picks up rain drops, snow, sleet...anything that is big enough to bounce the signal back. The radar is programmed as best as possible to filter out non-precipitation returns but airborn particles (biological or not) of any sort scatter the signal in a way similar to precip so they may be displayed by the computer as precip. So dust storms, gust fronts that are kicking up stuff, ash clouds above and downwind of intense fires, bugs, bats, birds, etc... show up on weather radars. The display made publicly available is often the most heavily filtered but lots of stuff shows up on the unfiltered data. Radar has proved to be a good remote sensing tool for people studying bats, birds, and insects (as illustrated in Jay's link above).

Unfortunately many conspiracy theorists see non-precipitation clutter as evidence of nefarious activity by "them".

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/75...s-and-Scalar-Squares-are-Often-From-the-Birds

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/762-Debunked-9-9-2012-HAARP-ring-outbreak-Midwest-to-South-USA


Purple Martin Roost Rings are really neat.

http://virtual.clemson.edu/birdrad/com4g.htm

The neat thing is how similar the morning dispersal pattern of purple martins is to the evening dispersal of Mexican free-tailed bats. They are both colonial bug eaters except that one is nocturnal mammal and the other is a day-feeding bird.

http://www.batcon.org/index.php/media-and-info/bats-archives.html?task=viewArticle&magArticleID=766

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkJ6PKa-r20

http://shoreacres.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/in-a-mirror-dimly/