Northeast Regional Weather Radar. About Weather Radar. Radar is an acronym that stands for RAdio Detection And Ranging. A weather radar consists of a parabolic dish (it looks like a satellite dish) encased in a protective dome and mounted on a tower of up to five stories tall. About 150 NEXRAD (NEXt generation of weather RADar) Doppler radars were installed throughout the U.S. in the 1990s. The radar itself does not delineate between rain and snow but AccuWeather's proprietary algorithms do, based on atmospheric conditions.