Three snow cases were observed using millimeter wave cloud radar,weighing rain gauge,balloon sounding and S band radar in Beijing area in December 2015.A preliminary analysis on the macro and micro structure characteristics of snow clouds,the electromagnetic wave attenuation of millimeter wave cloud radar,the snow water content,and estimation of total snow amount for the Dec 22-Dec 23 snow case was conducted.The results show that:(1) With high spatial-temporal resolution,the millimeter wave cloud radar is good at observing details of snow cloud system.The supercooled liquid particles could be detected by reflectivity Z,linear depolarization ratio (LDR) and radial velocity (V).(2) The maximum radar reflectivity could represent the max water content area in the snow cloud.The maximum value of Z and its duration and occurrence height were proportional to surface snowfall amount when the value of Z was greater than 20 dBZ.The maximum terminal velocity means the maxium ascending V(when V>0) or the minimum descending v(when V<0),which was within the range of-0.5-2 m s⁻¹.The minimum value of terminal velocity represents the maximum falling velocity of the particles,which is within the range of-3——1 m s⁻¹.(3) There could have several peaks in the reflectivity profile with increasing height due to different wind speeds at different heights.This characteristic of radar reflectivity is much more obvious in snow case than in rain case.(4) The difference in reflectivity between Ka and S band radars was less than 2.5 dBZ.The reflectivity of Ka band radar was slightly larger than that of S band radar.(5) Comparing the snowfall retrieved from radar data with surface gauge measurements,it was found that the accuracy of hourly snow retrievals was 20.38% and the error in the retrievals of snowfall amount was 6.58%.The absolute value of error in 24-h snowfall was 1.9 mm.The above result suggests that the radar snowfall retrieval has high practicability in reflecting the surface snowfall.The snow water content was between 0.05 g m⁻³ and 0.15 g m⁻³ in thriving snow clouds.At the early stage of snowfall or when the snow clouds started to dissipate,the snow water content was less than 0.04 g m⁻³ Radar observations could well reflect the snow water content in the entire layer with a decent quality.Results of the present study indicate that with the application of cloud radar and preliminary analysis on radar observations of snow clouds,we can get a better understanding of the macro and micro structures of snow clouds and provide information for the development of cloud model and snow seeding potential evaluation.