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Abstract. Winter precipitation forecasts of phase and amount are challenging, especially in Northeast United States where mixed precipitation events from various synoptic systems frequently occur. Yet, there are not enough quality observations of winter precipitation, particularly microphysical properties from falling snow or mixed phase precipitation. During the winters of 2021–2022, 2022–2023, and 2023–2024, the NASA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Ground Validation (GV) program conducted a field campaign at the University of Connecticut (UConn). The goal of this campaign was to observe various phases of winter precipitation and winter storm types to validate the GPM satellite precipitation products. Over the three winters at UConn, a total of 40 instruments were deployed across two observing sites that captured 117 precipitation events, including 19 phase transition events as indicated by the PARSIVEL2. These instruments included scanning and vertically pointing radars, along with suites of in-situ sensors. In addition, an unmanned aircraft system has been deployed in 2023–2024. Here, an overview of the different field deployments, instrumentation, and the datasets collected are presented. To showcase the observations, this article features a wide-ranging set of measurements collected from the instrument suite for the 28 February 2023 storm, during which six to eight inches of snow accumulated at the two different observing sites. Also included is a discussion on how these observations can be combined with other datasets to validate ground-based and remote sensing measurements and highlight important atmospheric processes that impact winter precipitation phase and amount. The datasets collected from this GPM GV field campaign are available at https://doi.org/10.5067/GPMGVUCONN/DATA101 (Cerrai et al., 2025). 

Abstract Convective clouds play an important role in the Earth’s climate system and are a known source of extreme weather. Gaps in our understanding of convective vertical motions, microphysics, and precipitation across a full range of aerosol and meteorological regimes continue to limit our ability to predict the occurrence and intensity of these cloud systems. Towards improving predictability, the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored a large field experiment entitled “Experiment of Sea Breeze Convection, Aerosols, Precipitation, and Environment (ESCAPE).” ESCAPE took place between 30 May - 30 Sept. 2022 in the vicinity of Houston, TX because this area frequently experiences isolated deep convection that interacts with the region's mesoscale circulations and its range of aerosol conditions. ESCAPE focused on collecting observations of isolated deep convection through innovative sampling, and on developing novel analysis techniques. This included the deployment of two research aircraft, the National Research Council of Canada Convair-580 and the Stratton Park Engineering Company Learjet, which combined conducted 24 research flights from 30 May to 17 June. On the ground, three mobile X-band radars, and one mobile Doppler lidar truck equipped with soundings, were deployed from 30 May to 28 June. From 1 August to 30 Sept. 2022, a dual-polarization C-band radar was deployed and operated using a novel, multi-sensor agile adaptive sampling strategy to track the entire lifecycle of isolated convective clouds. Analysis of the ESCAPE observations has already yielded preliminary findings on how aerosols and environmental conditions impact the convective life cycle.