Accurate satellite-based estimates of rainfall are critical for characterizing and monitoring the global energy and water cycle yet comparisons of rainfall products from CloudSat, Aqua, and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) highlight significant disagreement regarding the amount of rain that falls at latitudes poleward of 30 degrees. Ground-based measurements demonstrate that a significant fraction of the rainfall at these latitudes comes in the form of light rainfall from systems with shallow freezing levels that pose a significant challenge to most satellite precipitation sensors. Ongoing development of new or improved algorithms for detecting and quantifying high latitude rainfall, however, suffers from a general lack of dedicated ground-validation datasets in these environments.