Ice-nucleating particles impact the severity of precipitations in West Texas Hemanth S. K. Vepuri1,*, Cheyanne A. Rodriguez1, Dimitri G. Georgakopoulos4, Dustin Hume2, James Webb2, Greg D. Mayer3, and Naruki Hiranuma1,* 5 1Department of Life, Earth and Environmental Sciences, West Texas A&M University, Canyon, TX, USA 2Office of Information Technology, West Texas A&M University, Canyon, TX, USA 3Department of Environmental Toxicology, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA 4Department of Crop Science, Agricultural University of Athens, Athens, Greece 10 *Corresponding authors:
[email protected] and
[email protected] Supplemental Information 15 S1. Precipitation and Particulate Matter Properties S1.1 Precipitation Categorization In this study, we have segregated our precipitation samples into four different categories, such as (1) snows, (2) hails/thunderstorms, (3) long-lasted rains, and (4) weak rains. For this categorization, we have considered both our observation-based as well as the disdrometer-assigned National Weather Service (NWS) 20 code. Initially, the precipitation samples had been assigned one of the four categories based on our manual observation. In the next step, we have used each NWS code and its occurrence in each precipitation sample to finalize the precipitation category. During this step, a precipitation sample was categorized into snow, only when we identified a snow type NWS code (Snow: S-, S, S+ and/or Snow Grains: SG). Likewise, a precipitation sample was categorized into hail/thunderstorm, only when the cumulative sum of NWS codes for hail was 25 counted more than five times (i.e., A + SP ≥ 5; where A and SP are the codes for soft hail and hail, respectively).