diff --git a/.github/actions/run-tests/action.yml b/.github/actions/run-tests/action.yml
index eecbc00154..88bb8098ef 100644
--- a/.github/actions/run-tests/action.yml
+++ b/.github/actions/run-tests/action.yml
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ inputs:
   pytest-args:
     description: 'Additional arguments to pass to pytest'
     required: false
-    default: '--mpl -W error::metpy.deprecation.MetpyDeprecationWarning'
+    default: '--mpl -W error::metpy.deprecation.MetpyDeprecationWarning -n auto --cov --cov-report=xml'
 runs:
   using: composite
   steps:
@@ -30,10 +30,8 @@ runs:
       # By running coverage in "parallel" mode and "combining", we can clean up the path names
       run: |
         set -e -o pipefail
-        python -m coverage run -p -m pytest ${{ inputs.pytest-args }} tests/ 2>&1 | tee tests-${{ inputs.key }}.log
-        python -m coverage combine
-        python -m coverage report
-        python -m coverage xml
+        python -m pytest ${{ inputs.pytest-args }} tests/ 2>&1 | tee tests-${{ inputs.key }}.log
+
 
     - name: Run doctests
       if: ${{ inputs.run-doctests == 'true' }}
diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index d3f06f5bf5..b37d4483b7 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -301,7 +301,14 @@ To run these tests, use:
 
 ```sh
 pytest --mpl
-````
+```
+
+To run tests in parallel, use `-n <number_of_processes>` or `-n auto` (using `pytest-xdist`):
+
+```sh
+pytest --mpl -n auto
+pytest --mpl -n 2
+```
 
 When adding new image comparison tests, start by creating the baseline images for the tests:
 
diff --git a/ci-dev/test_requirements.txt b/ci-dev/test_requirements.txt
index e3ba23ed7f..01e3b97749 100644
--- a/ci-dev/test_requirements.txt
+++ b/ci-dev/test_requirements.txt
@@ -1,5 +1,8 @@
+
 packaging==26.0
 pytest==9.0.0
+pytest-cov==6.2.1
 pytest-mpl==0.18.0
+pytest-xdist==3.8.0
 coverage==7.13.0
-vcrpy==8.1.0
+vcrpy==8.1.0
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 7ad5b26abc..9e70377e40 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -58,6 +58,8 @@ test = [
     "netCDF4",
     "packaging>=21.0",
     "pytest>=7.0",
+    "pytest-xdist",
+    "pytest-cov",
     "pytest-mpl",
     "vcrpy>=4.3.1"
 ]