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Manufactured by DeTect (now Radiometrics) and added to the MIPS platform in 2009, the XPR is a unique tool to the MIPS. The XPR is a horizontally polarized, vertically pointing Doppler radar that allows for high resolution vertical Doppler moments from the surface to ~10 km above radar level. With transmissions in the X-band, the XPR is sensitive to Rayleigh scatter from cloud droplets, hydrometeors, and insects. With the XPR, vertical motions and vertical structures within precipitating clouds can be retrieved. 
The XPR capturing many different features in the atmosphere during a thunderstorm passage. Flexible parameters such as number of gates, pulse lengths, and samples averaged allows the XPR to be used in a variety of conditions ranging from fog and snowfall to heavily precipitating and vigorous thunderstorms. This range makes the XPR a useful instrument to measure vertical motion at high resolutions. The typical operating parameters for the XPR during thunderstorms are 0.38 microsecond pulse length, 50-meter gate spacing, 300 range gates, and 128 samples averaged (~6 Hz measurements). The XPR has provided critical vertical structure information over the years, capturing heavy snowfall and embedded Kelvin-Helmholtz waves during the OWLES campaign in 2014, to bounded weak echo regions inside passing supercell thunderstorms. 
XPR data showing a large,overhanging bounded weak echo region (BWER) as a supercell thunderstorm passes over the instrument during the tornado outbreak of April 27, 2011. A climate-controlled computer cabinet is mounted underneath the XPR that holds the radar components and control computers. Though the XPR is typically mounted to the MIPS trailer and controlled from inside the MIPS truck, this cabinet allows the XPR to work as a stand-alone system. |
A gust front detected by the XPR on 7 Aug 2013. 
A wake low as depicted by the XPR on 3 Jan 2017. |