In this talk, I will present results and my contributions to collaborative projects mainly focusing on radar-based hydrometeor and precipitation analysis, developed as a value-added product for the U.S. Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (DOE ARM) program, and urban flux measurements under the Community Research on Climate and Urban Science (CROCUS) project. I will compare radar hydrometeor classification results from two methods and discuss quantitative precipitation estimation, with a particular emphasis on snowfall. In the CROCUS project, I will show preliminary results from our first urban flux measurement site at UIC where we installed a 10-meter tower equipped with advanced sensors to track water vapor (H₂O) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) exchanges between the urban environment and the atmosphere. The results emphasize a need for a dense flux measurement network to capture urban climate variability.  Lastly, I will show a novel approach to camera-based cloud motion analysis currently running on CROCUS nodes.