New Evidence That NEXRAD Misses Light Precipitation

A new paper authored by Mark Smalley has been published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology that compares CloudSat observations to the NOAA Stage IV precipitation product.  The results suggest that precipitation occurrence statistics agree well between the two datasets in warmer precipitation regimes but that NEXRAD fails to capture significant amounts of falling snow.  Estimates suggest that this missing precipitation may account for up to 20% of the total accumulation in river basins.