Akron chemical fire visible on Cleveland radar

(WKBN) — A large fire broke out at SMB Products in Akron , Ohio, on Thursday, and it was so large that the National Weather Service radar in Cleveland was able to detect it.

The wind Thursday was blowing out of the south, and you can see that the smoke plume moved off to the north. The signature was visible on the radar for nearly 3 hours. Currently, there are no concerns from the Environmental Protection Agency regarding hazardous chemicals in the atmosphere.

How does radar detect smoke?

The radar signature Thursday was similar to the one that was present during the East Palestine train derailment last year. Usually, when people think of weather radars, they are thinking about how they are used to detect rain and snow.

However, weather radars have numerous non-meteorological uses such as the detection of birds, insects, and in this case, smoke from fires.

Radars emit pulses of electromagnetic radiation in both a horizontal and vertical direction. This radiation travels roughly at the speed of light, and it encounters clouds, bugs, precipitation and more along the way.

When the radar pulse interacts with these objects, a portion of it is reflected back to the radar dish, and this is recorded as an echo. However, there is a caveat. The radars that the National Weather Service use are designed specifically to detect precipitation-sized particles. Raindrops have a diameter of 1-2 millimeters, which are well within the detectable range of the radars that the National Weather Service uses.

Smoke particles are typically smaller than this, but larger fires can feature bigger smoke particles, and the high density of smoke particles during such fires makes them detectable using radar.

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