Patent ID: 6980908

Claim:
A method for electronically processing weather data to predict and display when precipitation will start and stop at a location within a geographic area comprising: a. creating and storing a master steering component grid defining point locations across said geographic area with each point location being assigned a precipitation steering component, said precipitation steering component being based upon either storm motion data or wind speed and direction data at various levels of the atmosphere or both storm motion data and wind speed and direction data at various levels of the atmosphere; b. creating and storing a master precipitation grid based upon data received from a weather radar network, such data being processed to remove false echoes and ground clutter from data received from individual radar sites and other data, said master precipitation grid indicating the location and type of precipitation; c. identifying and storing the latitude and longitude information for a particular location with a geographic area; d. using the master steering component grid to create and store a weather corridor for the particular location, said weather corridor extending from the particular location in the opposite direction of the steering component for the particular location, the length of the corridor being proportional to a value representative of the wind speed portion of the steering component over a specified time period for the particular location, the width of the corridor being defined to permit detection of precipitation that will impact the particular location and prevent detection of precipitation that will not impact the particular location; e. using the weather corridor and the master precipitation grid to determine whether precipitation exists within the corridor and, if so, predicting the start and end time of precipitation at the particular location based upon the forecast speed and direction of movement of precipitation within the corridor; and f. displaying said predicted start and end times on a display.