Weather radar picks up Wallops Island rocket explosion

The explosion of the Antares rocket seconds after takeoff from the Wallops Island base on Virginia's eastern shore was strong enough to show up on several weather radars centered on the area. A series of radar images from Tuesday evening shows what looks like a thunderstorm, but is actually a plume of smoke moving northeast toward Maryland and over the Atlantic Ocean. Some weather radars can pick up things other than precipitation through the use of dual-polarization, which sends out both a signal for precipitation and one for non-precipitation, and this was the case with the Wallops Island radar site.