Overview of D3R Snow Observation during IMPACTS

Winter snowstorms on the eastern seaboard cause major disruptions to transportation, commerce, and public safety. However, understanding of these snowstorms remains a challenge while these snow events pose significant risk to public safety. To better understand this phenomenon, NASA conducted a field campaign named Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS: https://espo.nasa.gov/impacts) from January 4, 2023, to March 1, 2023. IMPACTS collected data from a “satellite-simulating” ER-2 flight which had advanced radar, lidar, microwave radiometer remote sensing instruments and “cloud-penetration” P-3 flight that had microphysical probes, dropsonde capabilities and ground-based radar and rawinsonde data. The Dual-frequency Dual-polarized Doppler Radar (D3R) participated in this field campaign and was deployed at University of Connecticut to observe the snowstorm weather event. D3R is a deployable weather radar system operating at the two global precipitation measurement (GPM) radar frequencies (Ku- and Ka-band) to enable GPM ground validation. D3R operated continuously and collected data from January 12, 2023, till April 16, 2023. During this period, D3R collected coincident data for 104 overpasses at the radar site. Furthermore, ER-2 and P-3 flights collected data over the D3R site on February 28, 2023, and D3R coordinated the scans to match the flight. In this paper, we present the observation of D3R in various winter storm events during IMPACTS and present comparisons with other observations.