After some searching, I ended up using a microcontroller and a piece of code borrowed from the web that I tweaked and adapted. The microcontroller-based concept was chosen because I wanted to scale ...

Lidar measures distance, while radar provides a precise estimate of velocity. This is a bit of an oversimplification, of course.

[Andy] demonstrates building an ultrasonic anemometer using a cheap after-market parking distance sensor kit and an Arduino. Demo video after the break.