wren

When I saw Stonehenge as a kid, we just drove past it really slowly, with my dad saying "don't worry, everyone else wants to slow down to look too!"

Now I make that drive every few weeks 🫠

aha here's a full explanation of the thought process:

• no other weather report matches these patterns
• they're suspiciously round and not blobby like real clouds
• they're each suspiciously localised around the radars in the network
• there are lots of types of radar artefacts, including close-to-radar ground-clutter (this is what I assumed it was) but it's too consistent and large of a signal for that
• so it must be something uniform, in the air instead of on the ground, that isn't rain
• bugs are about the size of a big rain drop! enough to be picked up as a strong signal by the radar and enough to prevent the radar from seeing long distances
• It's also been flying-ant-day recently across Europe

Yeah, I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier!

One of my colleagues is doing radar bug-signal research. Supposedly, bugs show up as pretty bright signals on radar (similar size to raindrops!), and if you use doppler, you can pick up how fast the wind speed is by assuming the bugs are being transported by the wind

Also: lots of other fun things (bats, trains, smoke) show up on radar

Wait, I'm wrong yet again!!!! "A bug in the matrix" in the description should have clued me in...

The DWD network is surely more reliable than this, and it's nice high pressure, so it's rain-free and plenty of updrafts, so it's perfect conditions for insects!! They cause enormous signals, no idea why I didn't think of it first.

(Seen recently in the news in the UK here )

Oooh, excellent point! The german weather service (DWD, which OP is using) has 17 operational weather radar... looks like an artefact to me!

EDIT: it's not an artefact, but insects!

Doesn't look like orographic cloud to me! Usually they have ripples in em

Plus, the Alps are only really in the South and nowhere near Berlin (which is pretty flat) - so you'd see more enhancement in the South than the North, whereas these are pretty evenly spaced

looks a bit like convective cells to me! they happen in summer (as long as there is sufficient surface heating to drive the convection) - they're like bubbles in boiling water.

It looks like you've got high pressure over there though... the high pressure may just limit the cloud heights and intensity of the precipitation?

Edit: these look a little too big to be pop-up cells, but they still look more convective (instead of frontal). a bit suspiciously too round, though. Do they stay consistent and track across the sky, or are they more bubble-like?

2nd edit: looks like I'm wrong and it is a radar artefact :) (this is why looking at radar timelapses is more important than just single-frames!)

3rd edit: it's not an artefact, it's a real signal! it's insects!

I've heard people say both "young people are more politically conscious than ever" and also "young people are more disengaged/disillusioned from democracy than ever"

Whilst those things can both be true, I think it's v important now to try and get young people actively engaged with politics.

But also - we should keep trying to get older generations to be kinder, too.

I've been told "your generation will make the world right again!" by the generations above mine, since I was in primary school. 20 years later, we're still waiting for conservatives to die off. If climate change has proven anything, it's that we should all be doing more than just waiting it out

96% of people aged 55 and over regularly using BBC services

69% of Britons aged under 16 said they consumed any BBC content in an average week

Since under 16 year olds don't typically pay for TV licenses, I wish they'd given us a percentage for between 16 and 55 !

can't believe I have to say this, but even if kids have no genetic or medical reason for being fat, bullying children relentlessly is still unkind and unhelpful

That one might have been a mistranslation, but you'd hope most sanrio fans would be cool about gender !

it's pretty well known that Hello Kitty is a little girl who dresses as a cat!

What's more up-for-debate is whether her boyfriend, Dear Daniel, is also a little girl (presumably, butch lesbian) or not