When initially switching Az Shear from KMXX to KEOX, I was surprised as to how strong the Az Shear values were from KEOX well before they increased from KMXX. This got me thinking as to how Az Shear could be used in a situational awareness type of setup.

Given that the storm was >100km from the KEOX radar site, the higher beam height from KEOX was likely picking up on what was going on in the mid levels of the storm (although the beam width was also much greater). A good situational awareness “best practice” could be to have a procedure or display that would display all the single radar Az Shear values  from both the home and surrounding radar sites into a multi-panel display. Noticing that a particular radar was showing higher Az Shear values could lead the operational forecaster to focus more attention on a particular storm, with the idea of the earlier increase in Az Shear potentially leading to a faster lead time down the road.

KEOX single radar AZ Shear is on the left. KMXX single radar AZ Shear is top right, and KMXX velocity data on bottom right.