Data Quality Anomalies and Phenomena on the WSR-88D

Throughout the operational life of the WSR-88D numerous phenomena and items of interest have been observed in WSR-88D data from wedges of erroneous Differential Reflectivity (ZDR) data and radial spikes to elevation discontinuities and reflections. Many of these provide erroneous information that can cause confusion among forecasters and operators. While some are the result of software bugs which can be mitigated in future software changes, the majority of these phenomena are products of nature, physical constraints of the system, or failure of specific hardware components and, thus, have the potential of being present in the data given the right set of circumstances. In this paper, a broad collection of these anomalies are presented with discussion on the impact to the users of the data.