Dual Polarization capabilities will be added to all National Weather Service (NWS) WSR-88D Doppler Radars over the next couple of years. The first NWS field office to receive the upgrade to Dual Polarization was Phoenix, AZ. The second site was Newport/Morehead City, NC (MHX) in mid-June, 2011. This exciting modernization will allow NWS forecasters to better estimate rainfall amounts, and will aid in other severe weather operations, namely hail detection, and estimation of hail size. This paper will discuss how the NWS office at Newport/Morehead City, NC prepared for this upgrade, specifically the operational forecaster training that was completed prior to, during and post installation. The training included online modules from the Warning Decision Training branch (WDTB), Weather Event Simulator (WES) warning exercises, and live training from the WDTB. Moreover, the paper will detail our operations during the actual upgrade. And finally, this paper will show examples and some short case studies of phenomenon that have been detected on the radar since the upgrade. These examples consist of several hail events, including one hail event that occurred just 11 minutes after the radar returned to operations following the upgrade, precipitation amount comparisons between the legacy precipitation algorithm and the Dual Polarization algorithm, Dual Polarization interpretation of various boundaries (sea breeze, outflow), and a case of pyroconvection.
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