Development of the Holographic Airborne Rotating Lidar Instrument Experiment (HARLIE) has been in progress for a number of years. HARLIE is an innovative and compact lidar that uses a novel technique to measures aerosol backscatter profiles and is capable of scanning in a conical fashion. This conical scan affords a unique view of the atmosphere and allows for derivation of the wind speed. An extensive lidar data sets now exists from several field campaigns and investigations of the atmosphere. These data sets have proven very useful in visualizing a variety of mesoscale phenomena including shear-induced instabilities and gust fronts. We will discuss HARLIE and highlights of measurement capabilities using examples from case studies. In particular, we will discuss measurements from a gust front that affected the Northern Oklahoma region on 23 September 2000. We will compare HARLIE and co-located scanning Raman lidar data of this mesoscale atmospheric structure and summarize the role of lidars in advancing our understanding of these structures. A summary of how the lidars compare to "standard" instruments will also be presented.