A viewer recently e-mailed me this question, and I thought the blog would be a fun place to answer it. The picture above looks like an explosion, however, instead of bombs, all you need is a change of temperature to create this ground clutter. Every now and then you'll hear Ted and I mention it, but what is happening within the atmosphere to paint this picture?

Ground clutter is created when the beam of the radar is bent more toward the earth's surface, allowing objects near the ground to scatter the radar beam's energy. This typically happens when we have a temperature inversion.

An inversion occurs when you have warm air on top of a shallow cold air mass; moreover, an inversion is a very stable environment, and it refracts the radar toward the ground. In fact, we have ideal inversion conditions over the next couple of nights as the surface cools faster than the warm air aloft, so take a look at the radar late at night.