Accurate electromagnetic modeling of melting hail

Analysis of electromagnetic scattering from hailstones has conventionally been done using the T-matrix method. This method, which reduces exactly to the Lorenz-Mie scattering theory when the scattering particle is a homogeneous or layered piecewise homogeneous sphere, worked well so far when we tried to understand the measurements. However the measurements have become fairly sophisticated with many decades of multiple polarization measurements and the current models are not able to explain many of the nuances in the measurements, because the current model is not well suited for analysis of arbitrarily shaped and non-layered particles.