Do you think after 30 years of air traffic control experience, watching D-Brites and regular Radar scopes, that I'm not familiar with
temperature inversion? What you're referring to is standard ground clutter, from having the radar beam turned up too high.
Temperature inversions can happen in the morning but usually happen after sunrise, and are rarely seen at night, unless over water or over a large city.
More often they're seen in the afternoon, at or just after sunset, and almost always when an approaching cold front is pushing out warmer air masses.
But that usually brings rain storms, and thunderstorms.
But weather radar is tuned slightly different that air traffic control radar, and I'm more familiar with ATC Radar.
However, we had to continuously watch the weather out the windows in the Tower,and you learn through years of experience of seeing out the window, compared to the computer weather loops that you monitor, and compared to the ATC Radar on the D-Brite or ATC RAdar scope when in the IFR room, what those returns on the scopes are.
I learned how to tell the difference between early morning bugs risings with the sunrise, birds migrating through the area, wind gust shear lines out in front of the main storms approaching, and your average temperature inversion.
It's visual and it requires motion to get a good feel for what your seeing.
You're grasping at video game "straws" and you're trying to compare all your years of playing with Flight Simulators to the real world.
There IS a difference!
Here'sa another question:
Is the BHM Airport a manned weather station, or is it an automated weather station that is remotely controlled from a central station in Atlanta Center?