AMHERST, Mass. – An all-student team of 15 graduate and undergraduate researchers, including members from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is creating an experimental radar system designed to transform our ability to monitor rainfall. The students, working with the Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) in the UMass College of Engineering, are building an array of sensors, called a test bed, that produces very accurate rainfall data to be used to predict flooding, wind fields, and for crop hydrology. Such precise data is very valuable to weather forecasters, agriculturalists and researchers.