CORRESPONDENCE Comments on ''An Objective High-Resolution Hail Climatology of the Contiguous United States''

Cintineo et al. (2012) presented a radar-based hail climatology for the continental United States for 2007–10 that illustrates the advantage of multiradar, grid-based techniques in deriving a high-resolution hail climatology. The Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) ‘‘maximum expected size of hail’’ (MESH) product was used to determine days with any hail and days with severe hail. The size of their dataset, quality control and processing of their dataset, and results are noteworthy. For example, Cintineo et al. illustrated substantial differences between the radar-based hail climatology and the corresponding reports-only climatology, drawing into question the reliability of the reports-based climatology in some cases. While discussing challenges with using theWSR-88D data, the authors correctly noted that beam widening becomes a problem in regions of single-radar coverage at long ranges from the radar. However, we believe that in doing so they interpreted partial beam-filling artifacts incorrectly. We do not contend this changes their results in anymeaningful way, but we would like to take this opportunity to clarify some of the problems associated with partial beam filling at relatively long ranges from the radar. 2. Beam filling at long ranges from the radar