How to Use

Click the "About Radar" tab for information about interpretation of the radar images.

To search the archive for specific RADAR images, the form near the bottom of the page can be used. The following criteria may be selected from the form:

• Region or Site

  Select a geographical region or local site from the list. Alternatively, regions may be selected by clicking on the radar images in National View and sites may be selected by clicking on an area near a black dot in National and Regional Views.

• Start date and time

  Select the date and time from the lists. The time selected will correspond with the first image found in the search.

• Duration

  Select a duration from the list. This will represent the time span (and interval between images) beginning at the start date and time. By default, the 2 hour period is selected.

• Image Type

  View a rain or snow image at any time by selecting the rain or snow image type option. The “default” image setting will display rain or snow images depending on the time of the year. When “default” is selected, radar images automatically switch to snow images in the winter months (December 1st to March 31st) and rain images in the summer months (April 1st to November 30th). Two exceptions are the Aldergrove and Victoria sites, which have default images of rain all year round. For image sets that cross the cut off date, the starting image type will be the default image type for the entire set. For example, all images in an image set from November 30th 11 pm to December 1st 1 am will be rain images, since the starting image is in the “summer”.

The following is an explanation of the common playback controls for the different views of the radar images.

The displayed image will be, by default, the first one available in a series of 13 images. The time interval between images is either 10, 30 or 60 minutes depending on the selected duration. To animate the series of images, you first need to click the "Play" button in the playback controls above. In addition, you can select the images individually.

The Playback Controls are as follows:

 Play: Used to "play" or activate the series of images in the loop.

 Stop: Used to "stop" the series of images in the loop.

 First Image: Used to loop back to the first image in the series.

 Previous: Used to move backward one image at a time.

 Next: Used to move forward one image at a time.

 Last Image: Used to loop ahead to the last image in the series.

 Increase the speed of the animation in the loop of images.

 Decrease the speed of the animation in the loop of images.

 Reset the speed of the animation to its original setting.