Recent Hazardous Weather Testbed activities involving forecaster use of dual-pol phased array radar data

Results from phased array radar (PAR) activities in the Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) in 2024 and early 2025 showed that the rapid updates and increased vertical coverage provided by PARs helped forecasters better understand storm processes and increased their confidence in severe-weather warning decisions. Therefore, additional activities occurred in the HWT in August-September of 2025 and March of 2026 to build upon these previous results by involving more forecasters, further exploring the impacts of PAR on impact-based decision support services, and gathering forecaster feedback on an early version of an adaptive scanning algorithm.