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NEXRAD Weather Radar Archive (Level II / III)
U.S. weather radar archive useful for high-resolution precipitation and storm-event analysis when radar processing capacity is available.
Dataset summary
- Provider
- NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information
- Spatial coverage
- CONUS, AK, HI, PR, GU
- Temporal coverage
- 1991 → present
- Spatial resolution
- ∼1 km radial (L2); 1 km gridded products (L3)
- Temporal resolution
- 5-min volume scans (L2); 1-h or sub-hourly derived fields
- Formats
- NEXRAD Level II, NEXRAD Level III
- Climate variable tags
- Rainfall
- Observatory relevance
- North Carolina
Use guidance
- Best for
- Storm-scale rainfall, severe weather, and U.S. event reconstruction where radar processing is justified.
- Not best for
- Simple global rainfall exposure workflows or beginner projects.
- Common pitfalls
- Treating radar archive access as a simple tabular download.
- Ignoring radar coverage, beam blockage, and processing artifacts.
Variables and notes
- Reflectivity, radial velocity, spectrum width
- derived precip rate/accum, hail, echo tops
Related learning resources
Use these guides to interpret the variable, scale, format, and workflow choices before using this dataset in a climate-health analysis.