Letxa.com

RadarMatrix has the following to say about North Platte: " It will also show you how Billings and North Platte spark in unison. Have someone explain that because this is a pure fact that has been happening for the last month or so. How can Billings' spark coinside with a North platte spark based off of their explination? And why only these 2? This shows another connection of electricity!" and "Now we are dealing with Billings and North Platte. Both are sparking in unison and many times a day." (Source).

So basically this issue raised by RadarMatrix is that North Platte is "sparking" and, apparently, doing it in unison with the Billings MT site (Billings Anomaly Study).

NORTH PLATTE ANOMALY

The North Platte anomaly consists of occasional spoking, generally to the south and east, although sometimes over a somewhat larger range.

Contacting the radar operator at North Platte regarding the anomalies and providing him with a collection of images showing the anomaly, I received the following response:

Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 07:28:31 -0600
From: North Platte Radar Operator (???@noaa.gov)
To: letxa2000
Subject: RE: NEXRAD radar anomalies

Thanks for your question!

These type of appearances are not caused by meteorological occurrences, but rather by the components of the radar itself. In this case, it's actually a condition that occurs from one of the components being slightly out of alignment, and is currently being worked on. However, it will not affect the normal function of the radar or interpretation thereof, so essentially it creates nuisance spokes like the ones you've shown.

Thanks again - if you have any additional questions let us know!

ANALYSIS OF SUPPOSED "UNISON SPOKING" WITH BILLINGS MT

The allegation was made by RadarMatrix that North Platte exhibits its anomaly at the same time as Billings on many occasions--too many occasions to be explained by chance.

Before continuing, it should be noted that the entire concept of "spoking in unison" is flawed. NEXRAD stations produce radar images based on multiple scans and produce an image once every 5-10 minutes. Any given anomaly observed in a radar image was not necessarily present during the entire 5-10 minutes and there is no way to know exactly at what time the anomaly occured. Further, each NEXRAD scans independently. They are not syncronized such that all the radars finish producing their updates at the exact same time. The national radar images are based on the most recent images available from NEXRAD sites throughout the country. Although anomalies at different sites may appear on the national radar image at the same time that does not mean that all the NEXRAD sites produced the images at exactly the same point in time. In fact, such a condition is almost impossible statistically. Only by observing the images produced by each site and observing the date/time stamp is it possible to determine just how close in time anomalies occur.

During the 2-week period from Februrary 7, 2004 through February 21, 2004, both Billings and North Platte were monitored. During this time, 2112 images were captured from Billings of which anomalies were present in 66 (3.13%) of them for an average of 4.7 anomalies per day. The full album of Billings anomalies is available here. During the same time, 2005 images were captured from North Platte of which anomalies were present in 68 (3.39%) for an average of 4.9 anomalies per day. The full album of North Platte anomalies is available here.

Both North Platte and Billings demonstrated spoking at random times throughout the day and every hour of the day, although both seemed to show somewhat more spoking in the early morning hours. However, for the most part, the times were a random distribution throughout the hours of the day.

Having collected the anomalies from both Billings and North Platte over the 2-week period, we then proceeded to check how often anomalies presented themselves at approximately the same time at both sites. All times in the following list are provided in UTC.

1. 2/20/04: In unison. North Platte at 20:37 (very light), Billings at 20:37.
2. 2/15/04: North Platte at 17:27, Billings at 17:26, 1 minute apart.
3. 2/17/04: North Platte at 13:40, Billings at 13:38, 2 minutes apart.

According to this site, "When two events, A and B, are independent, the probability of both occurring is: P(A and B) = P(A) X P(B)" In other words, you multiply the probability of one event with the probability of the other event.

In the case of Billings, there is a 3.13% chance of an anomaly in any given image and at Billings there is a 3.39% chance of an anomaly. The chance of them both occuring at the same time is 0.0313 * 0.0339 = 0.11% (1/10th of a percent). This means that simply due to random chance we would expect Billings and North Platte to display an anomaly at the same time approximately once every 942 images.

During our observational period we collected 2112 images from Billings so we would expect there to be spoking in unison with North Platte in approximately 0.0011 * 2112 = 2.3 images. In fact, we saw simultaneous spoking on only one occasion, two if you consider "within 1 minute" to be "in unison" and three if you consider "within 2 minutes" to be "in unison."

CONCLUSION

Anomalies at North Platte are a result of an alignment problem with the radar. The operators are aware of the problem and will address it in the future. At the current time it is clear that they consider the anomalies to be no more than a "nuisance." Anomalies at Billings are explained here and are the result of interference from the Riverton WY and Great Falls MT radar sites.

North Platte and Billings are not spoking in unison at any suspicious frequency. In fact, the two sites are spoking "in unison" at almost exactly the frequency that statistical probability would expect them to. The logical conclusion is that the two events are not related to each other in any way and spoking "in unison" is simply a result of occasional random chance. The observed data permits no other logical conclusion.