It appears that the vLAPS 800×800 caught up and ended up being well-resolved by the early evening hours! Unfortunately, since I wasn’t tracking it all day, I don’t know how or why the max base reflectivity improved. Here’s the vLAPS at 22Z on Thursday:

The model picked up very well on the high reflectivity southwest of DC at the same time, and it did a decent job with the cell north of DC, though a bit underdone. However, the max reflectivity further to the south into southern Virginia appears to be overdone.

So perhaps this means that the model is off spatially in its forecast, with higher reflectivity values shifted too far to the south.