An analysis of the 23 May 2011 hailstorm in Oklahoma based on data from four different radars

Dual-polarization radar observations are often very useful for identifying areas of large hail in supercells. This study will provide an analysis of a supercell that produced extraordinarily large hail (then a state record for Oklahoma) on 23 May 2011 in southwestern Oklahoma. The following three X-band, ground-based, mobile Doppler radars were deployed southeast of the storm in close proximity to each other during part of the life of this convective storm: MWR05XP, NOXP and RaXPol. The first was (it is no longer in service) a hybrid, phased-array and mechanically scanning, rapid-scan, non-polarimetric radar from the Naval Postgraduate School; the second is a non-rapidly scanning, polarimetric radar from NSSL; the third is a rapid, mechanically scanning, polarimetric radar from the University of Oklahoma in Norman. An overview of storm evolution will be given based on data from all three radars and a nearby WSR-88D radar in Frederick, Oklahoma. Preliminary results of dual-Doppler analyses and dual-frequency analyses based on RaXPol and NOXP data will be presented. This study aims to contribute to an improved understanding of how hydrometeors (and, in particular, hail) evolve between the time of generation within the updraft and the time that they fall to the ground.