A successor of the AMDOP project was initiated which aims at explaining precipitation characteristics of winter snowfalls to the dynamics of the clouds. A central question is how turbulence, up- and downdrafts and other dynamical features influence the degree of riming of snow particles.

Radar instruments and software tools were prepared to examine the clouds and to retrieve the three-dimensional wind field of precipitation systems. Both vertically pointing and scanning Doppler radars are set up and allow combining different velocity measurements. However, considering the stratiform character of the winter snowfalls, we expect weak vertical velocities of the order of centimeters to decimeters per second. In this contribution we will discuss the accuracy of the wind field retrieval techniques for the expected meteorological and instrumental environment. The requirements observations and their processing need to fulfill will be given.