What happens when the weather radar sees the sun?

Our weather radars are constantly rotating around, scanning the skies at various angles above the horizon.   What happens when the radar is directly aimed at the sun?   What does it see?  Weather on old sol?

The answer.   This does happen and what we see are intense triangular features known as sun spikes.

These are caused by the radar receiving microwave radiation emitted by the sun, not microwave radiation emitted by the radar, hitting the sun and returning.

Here is an example from this morning when the Langley Hill radar near Hoquiam caught the rising sun (image at 7:44 AM):

Pretty neat.  The other echoes you see are mainly ground clutter (return from terrain) and a few birds still in the sky.

Or how about last night near sunset?  Here is an example from the Portland radar around 6:19 PM:

Not surprisingly, it is facing the west-southwest.

These sun spikes are particularly noticeable now because there is no precipitation to cover it up.  And when there is no precipitation the radars are in a hyper-sensitive clear air mode.

Ah yes...the forecast.   The latest model runs suggest it will be dry through next Friday, with only a weak disturbance on Monday and Tuesday bringing a bit of middle/high clouds.   And, yes....there is a good chance of morning low clouds on several of these dry days.  This is the Faustian bargain meteorologist make with the weather gods--- we trade low clouds for no rain.   If you don't like this, you make the deals.

But one thing is sure...the mountains should be spectacular with lots of sun and warmer than normal temperatures.