The wealth of information available in the form of NEXRAD radar data and products provides interesting challenges in their widespread distribution and utilization within the university community. Unidata currently provides redistribution of NEXRAD Level III data received via NOAAPORT to the university community over the Internet using the Local Data Manager (LDM) software. The necessity to deliver the large number of available Level III products to a broad user community led to significant improvements in the LDM software. Additionally, analysis and display capabilities for the use of radar data in research and education have seen major developments, and techniques used in compositing real-time data from multiple sites and incorporating data from other data sources to produce additional products have been developed.

Unidata, in collaboration with the University of Oklahoma and University of Washington, is leveraging the Local Data Manager software to deliver NEXRAD Level II data in near real-time in a project called CRAFT (Collaborative Radar Acquisition Field Test). Through CRAFT, many opportunities exist to explore the use of Level II data in model data assimilation schemes, 3-D vizualization, quantitative precipitation estimation, hazardous weather warnings, as well as the development of new paradigms in storm formation for research and education.