TRI-CITIES, Wash.-
Shortly after 7 a.m. on Tuesday, January 17 a series of mysterious circles began appearing on radar reports south of Benton City.
Social media and the internet were full of speculation about what the circles could be.
NonStop Local’s Monty Webb studied the radar returns and seems to have solved the mystery of what they could have been.
We had dense fog throughout the region yesterday morning and this contributed to the radar phenomenon. The fog created an inversion and resulted in what is called “super refraction” according to Webb.
The radar that covers our region comes from the National Weather Service in Pendleton. Due to the weather conditions on January 17 the radar beam bent closer to the ground, which resulted in objects closer to the surface getting picked up.
According to Webb when this happens radar can detect non-meteorological disturbances and helps explain what happened yesterday.
“It was probably a biological return, meaning it was probably geese that had bedded down in the grass south of the Yakima River.”
The geese probably weren’t flying because of the thick fog and then something scared them into the air where radar picked them up.
