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| | ATC Terms For Describing Radar Weather Echoes To Pilots |
 | | The remaining three categories correlate to bands of dBZ values to assist pilots in evaluating the severity of flight conditions that might be associated with those precipitation returns. |
 | | Therefore, the wide range of color coding available to NEXRAD is not available to the controller and, as you can see in Figure 2, the ARTCC’s WARP system does not display dBZ levels below 30, therefore center controllers will not be able to report areas of “light” weather radar echoes. |
 | | In the world of ATC, weather radar echoes are all referred to as “precipitation” even though, technically, it is possible the echo could be associated with birds, volcanic ash, etc., or precipitation that is not reaching the Earth’s surface (virga). |
| www.iflyamerica.org /atc.asp (1030 words) |
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