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Dryad

Northeast US Regional NEXRAD radar mosaics of winter storms from 1996-2023, part 2

Data files

Oct 25, 2023 version files 244.86 GB

Abstract

This dataset contains over 14,000 hours of regional radar mosaics over the northeast US from 600+ winter storm days between 1996-2023. Winter storm days are defined when at least 2 out of 15 surface stations in the northeast US (see attached map) produced at least 1 inch of snow over the 24 hour period. Sequences of these mosaics aid in analyzing the precipitation area and the structures within winter storms. Radar reflectivity data is combined from the first, lowest (0.5 degree) elevation angle from 12 NEXRAD WSR-88D radars in the northeast US (see attached). The scans occur every 5-10 minutes from each radar depending on the radar scan settings.  The time label of the regional map is based on the scan time central radar, KOKX (Upton, NY). Scans from other radars in the region are used for that time as long as they are within 8 minutes of the KOKX scan. The polar radar data from each radar is interpolated to a regional 1202 km x 1202 km Cartesian grid with 2 km grid spacing covering 35.73-46.8 degN and 66.36-81.85 degW. Where the radar domains overlap, we take the highest reflectivity value. For dates after dual-polarization integration (2012 onwards), files contain the correlation coefficient (RHO_HV) field and a binary field  that can be used to “image mute” the reflectivity which reduces the visual prominence of melting and mixed precipitation commonly mistaken for heavy snow. Image muting is applied where radar reflectivity is ≥ 20 dBZ and RHO_HV is ≤ 0.97. This product is different from other widely used radar mosaics such as the MRMS produced by NOAA since it does not interpolate to a constant altitude and thus preserves the finer scale details in the reflectivity field. Because the data used to create these mosaics are not interpolated to a constant altitude, the altitude varies over the region (altitudes of radar scan used at each grid point are provided as a field for each data file). This data set is specifically designed to analyze fine-scale structures in winter storms.

Part 1 contains files pre-dual polarization integration (1996-2012)
Part 2 contains files post-dual polarization integration (2012-2023)