The UNSTABLE Blog
Quick updates, thoughts, etc. from Neil Taylor on the UNSTABLE 2008 Pilot Field Experiment
Tuesday 22 July 2008
"Not with a bang, but a whimper...", T.S. Elliot could have been talking about our last IOD. Today we were hoping a number of things would happen (differential heating over the foothills, easterly low-level flow, some cooling aloft, thunderstorms) but they didn't. In the end it appears the deck of Sc and Cu that formed over the foothills suppressed the surface heating and falling pressures required to set up an upslope component to the low-level flow. To compound matters, a short wave coming north from the U.S. inibited the upper trough in BC from coming through in time to remove the warm nose on our soundings. The cloud also inhibited the aircraft from completing it's scheduled flightplan near the mountains....ah the weather...
Teams should be meandering their way back now with Pat King, Geoff, and Danny already arrived. Just released the 00Z sounding from WMI for completeness...may be interesting to see what happens overnight as the cooling aloft now seems to be moving eastward a bit...finally. There are no formal operations planned for tomorrow since Craig needs to get to AB3 to download some data and we have conducted our planned 8 IODs. If for some reason tomorrow ends up being interesting it is possible we could conduct some surface transects or perhaps a sounding or two since we still have consumables left. Otherwise we will start packing up.
I'll probably continue using this blog as a means to convey some UNSTABLE information following the IOP to keep people updated on how things are going. There is much work ahead in archiving and QCing data, analysing data, etc. Hopefully we'll have a fruitful couple of years as we work towards 2011 :-) As a sidenote, the abstract submitted to the 24th Conference on Severe Local Storms was accepted for presentation. This will be the first opportunity for us to formally present some preliminary results. We plan to follow that up with a BAMS article giving an overview of the experiment and some results. Formal publications will follow. Well, that's enough for now. There may be a post tomorrow depending on when this computer gets packed up. Otherwise it may be a while.
I'd like to take this opportunity to commend all our field teams for their efforts during a full 2-week campaign...I don't think anybody took a full day off during the whole time. It was great to see everyone work so hard despite very long days (even on down days most of us put in 12 hours or more), hundreds (thousands?) of kilometers, a couple hundred soundings, nearly 28 hours of flight time, late night briefings, even later dinners, and not nearly enough sleep. Thanks goes to:
Dave Sills, Andrew Giles, and Bill Burrows (AMMOS Team)
John Hanesiak, Julian Brimelow, Shannon Moodie, and Jay Anderson (MARS Team)
Craig Smith and Bruce Cole (Mobile Radiosonde Team and official harrasers of NAVCANADA)
Geoff Strong and Danny Brown (2nd Mobile Surface Team)
Erin Thompson and Joe Misfeldt (Water Valley Sounding Team)
Andrew Sheppard and Garry Toth (Tethersonde Team)
Dave Carlsen and Paul Sirvatka (3rd Mobile Surface Team)
Pat King (Flight Scientist)
Steve Knott, Chris Wielki, and dave Carlsen (RSD Forecast / Nowcast Support)
Terry Krauss, Jason Goehring, Viktor Makitov (the very hospitable and supportive Weather Modification Team)
Zac Glass, Bob Gorman, Joe Wiley, Jeff Allen (WMI's skilled pilots)
Others That Helped us out:
Manda Adams and Rhiannon davies (University of Calgary)
Lesley Hill and Marshall (University of Calgary)
Heather Rombough and Ron Mark (PASPC, Edmonton and the rest of the staff there as well)
And the staff at Boston Pizza
Our Visitors:
Mark Firmin (Ontario)
David Bright (Norman, OK)
Ross Hull and Kaleb (The Weather Network)
Jeff Blundell and Alan (The Discovery Channel - look for material to air in November)
Others contributed and my apologies to those whose names I didn't mention. Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate on some of the days that others were available to come and help out. So that's all for now. Maybe a short post tomorrow and more to come in the future...
Monday 21 July 2008
Well in some respects today played out as expected. We decided to conduct a CI boundary mission in the north of the UNSTABLE domain. For most of the day the mobile soundings were in relatively dry air as the boundary expected to move down from the north was slower than forecast. But, at 2243Z the boundary passed over the MARS so their last sounding should be from the moist side while Craig's team should still be sampling the drier side of this boundary. In the end it looks like the E-W boundary in the north is intersecting with a weak dryline SW of Rocky Mountain House. The AMMOS is trying to cross both boundaries now. In terms of CI we knew the chances were marginal at best for storms in our area so, as we've seen before, today was about the boundaries. It became clear once we released our morning soundings that the warm air aloft would not allow deep convection until some cooling arrived from the NW...unfortunately, ridging in Montana appears to have held this back a bit. The aircraft flew a new flightplan today and was able to sample the weak dryline-like boundary along the foothills but may not have sampled the E-W boundary. We tried to contact the pilots by radio to ask them to process further NW but they didn't pick up the radio so we couldn't adjust the track. Hopefully they did penetrate the boundary.
Tomorrow will be our last IOD, hopefully it's a good one though guidance from various models are not totally in agreement. We will examine at tonight's briefing and re-evaluate again in the morning. Teams are holding up well but getting tired, it's been a long haul (especially with 3 or more IODs in a row a couple of times) but the end is near. If we conduct operations tomorrow then Wednesday will be a day for organizing equipment and data and hopefully getting everyone together (including the tethersonde and Water Valley teams who have been a little out of the loop) in the evening to wind things up...more tomorrow...
Sunday 20 July 2008
Today we have opted to attempt the water vapour gradient mission looking at land cover (forest vs. crop). Conditions are not ideal for this as the SFC winds may be a little strong but this is probably the only chance we'll have to try this before the end of the IOP. Teams are getting in position as I type...
Pat King tells me that the aircraft data from today show a boundary in moisture between the forest and cropped areas, I haven't seen the soundings yet because teh signal was too weak where Julian was to email them. Once we get all the data together hopefully we see a signal in the ABL moisture field.
Tomorrow holds a fair amount of uncertainty with respect to CI but there may be interesting boundaries to look at as a possible cold front is suggested to interact with the dryline...maybe ;-) Wednesday seems to hold the most promise for deep convection so we're tentatively targeting Monday and Tuesday as our last two IODs.
Saturday 19 July 2008
Second down day in a row. Things are also uncertain still for Sunday and Monday too. Hopefully we can get in at least a couple more missions in the next few days. At this point though we've gotten some really good data already so we've been a little lucky in that sense...it could have been worse if we had nothing in the first 10 days. As it is we will have a fair amount of data to chew on regardless...
Some of the group went for a drive to the Oyen area yesterday, part of the MARS team (plus Danny) stumbled on 5cm hail there. Teams taking advantage of another down day today.
Friday 18 July 2008
Down day today as conditions don't look to satisfy our operational requirements. There will be storms likely early in the study area but the main action will probably be east of here. Tomorrow also looks like a no-go so pinning our hopes on the Sunday-Wednesday time frame.
Thursday 17 July 2008
Conducted operations to sample the pre-storm environment through a broad area of the primary UNSTABLE domain. In the end a possible dryine was sampled without the characteristic strong winds in the dry air that I've often associated with its development. This may have been more like the classic genesis mechanism of differential heating across the moisture boundary and resulting solenoidal circulation strengthening the boundary...or was it just advection of moist air into dry as the boundary slowly progressed westwards through the day. I'm kind of leaning toward the ladder as typically once mixing gets underway the boundary propagates eastward, not westward as observed. Either way a good case to examine more closely. In addition, the MARS had the boundary pass right over them and CI occured to their east. This was a back-feeding storm so that we may have near-proximity soundings from the MARS data.
Also did more with Discovery Channel today, they got shots of me at my desk but tried to force some 'action' through calls to the field, etc. I'm not sure how this is going to come out in the end despite their assurances it will be great. They then went to Calgary and got on a seeding flight to capture some storm visuals from the air. The episode will air on Daily Planet in November as part of a week-long series on science and technology in AB. I'm not sure I'm known as the field coordinator any more...I think some are wondering if 'FC' actually stands for 'Freak de Control'...
Wednesday 16 July 2008
Had Discovery Channel here today to do an overview interview and to get a ton of shots from the AMMOS. Tomorrow they will be looking to get some field shots and possibly some footage from the plane though may have to be from a WMI seeding flight. Have to go with Dave Sills now to replace modem at P3 and download data since problems have arisen with fops-hal machine. Otherwise was down day today. Dave Carlsen has joined Chris Wielki and Curt Dixon on a damage survey of the area near Medicine Hat following last night's storm...will be interested in results.
Tuesday 15 July 2008
Last night at the briefing we agreed today should be a down day. Some of us stayed up a little late and relaxed and then slept in a little...we still didn't get a lot of sleep but the down time was good. I never knew Dave Carlsen could sing...so this morning as I'm about to do my laundry I hear Dave Sills is in the car (getting internet signal) and suggesting we should consider some operations today in the southern part of the UNSTABLE study area. Then the discussion and debate began. I'm not sure the goal of the day's operations were ever fully defined but with only surface teams involved plus the MARS attempting to launch a pre-storm sounding it was decided to give it a try. So the AMMOS and 3rd mobile teams went in search of potential boundaries for CI and the MARS tried to get in good position for a pre-storm sounding. There was some miscommunication with the AMMOS directions but the MARS was able to launch a balloon into the inflow of a storm that would later (apparently) produce a tornado and golfball hail....and later look really nasty near Medicine Hat.
There was a power failure in Edmonton this morning that messed up the RSD fields and the fops-hal machine. I am nervous that the hard drive of fops-hal is not in good shape and that is where some data is being written to. Of course this happens during the project and while Ron Goodson (resident fops-hal support) is away...that's all for now as it is 8pm and I have to get ready for the briefing. More tomorrow.
Monday 14 July 2008
So I missed a day on the blog but yesterday was a good one. All 3 surface mobile teams were able to sample the dryline along the western regions of the UNSTABLE domain. We were also able to penetrate the dry air with the aircraft. All 3 surface teams have reported the width of the dryline to be on the order of metres. Geoff insists he could stand with his arms out and one would be in the dry air while the other was in the moist air! The Daves also reported the dryline would oscillate over their location on the timescale of seconds with relatively strong winds on either side (180 degrees in direction from one another). We are all very excited about the measurements taken yesterday and last Wed. Canadian firsts (at least) for sure. I'm becoming quite proficient at doing radiosonde flights, though I'm not sure doing flights and trying to be field coordinator is something to be done at the same time. After a day of good sampling we were treated to a few storms...
From Mr. Carlsen...
And from Mr. Giles...
Today was the third IOD in a row though things did not materialize as we'd hoped. Surface temperatures were too cool and a cap near 700mb was unable to be broken. The AMMOS did manage to get into some dry air near Canmore but in general things did not cooperate for our purposes. We opted not to include aircraft today though which was probably a good thing. The Discovery Channel will be out on Wed and Thurs but I fear the weather will not cooperate..we'll do our best. I figured only my wife and mother were reading this but I've heard a few others have as well so I guess I'll keep it going...need a down day (a real one, not the kind where we don't do operations and still work for 12 hours :-)
Saturday 12 July 2008
Conducted water vapour gradient mission today. Decided to change our SOPs last night to allow mobile teams to get in place early to sample the ABL. Erin and Joe came up from Water Valley and did 2-hourly soundings from here as well as train me on prepping sondes, etc. Good to see them since they've been stuck in Cochrane / Water Valley all week. The MARS team seem to have rectified the sounding issues with a new antenna from Craig. The flight was a little further north than usual and with a different flight plan (no spirals at ends of traverses). This is probably a good thing since the flight ended up being almost 4 hours (budgeted 3 hr flights). Released balloons on either side of a suspected soil moisture boundary. Don't think anything was resolved at the SFC but the soundings showed a consistent ~ 1 g/gk difference in mixed moisture between the proposed 'dry' and 'moist' sides of the boundary. The logistics of the mission worked out...we'll have to see what's in the data later.
Today saw the arrival of Mark Firmin (forecaster from OSPC). He ended up spending the day at the radar site with me talking about the project, etc. He also assisted with some analysis and helped out with real-time GPS by walking around the building with a laptop and then going for a drive. In the end we go this working so that I should be able to see the positions of the AMMOS and 2nd mobile teams in real time...possibly the 3rd team as well. Speaking of the 3rd team, Paul Sirvatka from the College of Du Page has also joined us today with Dave Carlsen...lots of help around now ;-) They will make up the 3rd mobile team for the week. Tomorrow looks like a good dryline day but with questionable potential for good storms...of course that's what we thought last Wednesday too...
Thought the media coverage was about done until the Discovery guys get here on the 16th but CHCA TV from Red Deer will be popping by tomorrow morning for an interview and will likely catch up with some of the mobile teams to talk to them about instrumentation, etc. All in all a productive day both for the field teams and for me back here at the airport (not much in the way of field coordination) was required for today's mission so I got caught up on some things. Lastly, here's a picture from Heather of one of the storms from last Wed. and also one from Terry Krauss in the plane taking the Weather Network camera guy up for a spin...whose best quote of the day was, "This is the stupidest thing I've ever done!" as he was tossed around inside the plane and banging his camera on the window....good times...
Friday 11 July 2008
No operations again today, cool and windy. Visiting P1 to P3 with Dave today to download data and inspect stations.
Thursday 10 July 2008
No formal operations conducted today. Dave and Andrew did take the AMMOS south to the Calgary to see a few storms and test some things in the AMMOS. David Bright from the SPC in Norman, OK visited today and had a chance to see the instrumentation and meet everyone involved in the project. He and I sat down in the afternoon for a while and discussed the RSD and some of the experimental CI fields developed in the HAL. I suspect we will further exchanges on the subject based on our dicussion. Craig and Bruce worked on the MARS upper-air system and think they've got it working. Tried a release which Julian expertly conducted only to have the signal lost almost immediately. The signal reception from the Vaisala systems we're using is problematic and is affecting the WMI system as well. All soundings from yesterday were godd so hopefully our luck continues.
We sent our friends from The Weather Network on their way today after an overview interview and 'fake clicking' on the field coordinator machine. Also did two more radio interviews for CFCW and CJOC (Letherbridge). Emma Bradbuy (king City) says she heard me on the radio in Ontario on CBC so I guess the story has been picked up nationally by at least some outlets. Here's a couple of links to stories...
Mountain View Gazette
CBC.CA
Edmonton Journal
Calgary Sun
Calgary Herald
Overall the stories aren't too bad though I noticed a few comments that weren't accurate and a few misinterpretations of things I said..oh well. Nearly 100% sure we will not conduct any operations tomorrow, still some other work to do so that is ok.
Wednesday 9 July 2008
This will be short after being here 15 hours already...we had a solid first day of operations today. A nice dryline cooperated with us and resulted in the initiation of a couple of (what would become) severe storms. We ended up with 2-hourly soundings at Bow Valley and Water Valley to get soundings on either side of the dryline. The aircraft flew but we won't see the aircraft data for some time. In the AMMOS Dave and Andrew were able to sample a 11 degree change in dewpoint in a matter of seconds, first at moderate speed and again slower. The AERI was in good position and had the boundary pass over top of them with a storm initiating nearly directly overhead. All in all it's hard to complain with that kind of success on day one...The Weather Network visited some of the field teams and the camera guy got a close up ride next to a supercell in one of the WMI planes. They seem happy. I think we're expecting David Bright to visit tomorrow but there is little chance they'll be much action to show him. Also have a couple more interviews to do tomorrow...dealing with the media has been an interesting experience.
Tuesday 8 July 2008 - Pre-IOP
Well, after a very hectic couple of days and a 15-hour day yesterday we're here! The field computer is set up and working well including connection within the EC firewall. The radiosonde, MARS, and second mobile surface teams have been here for at least a day getting things ready and myself, Dave Sills, and Andrew Giles formed a convoy to bring down the AMMOS last night. Today is a day of cross-calibrations for the SFC weather instruments for all the teams. We have a media scrum today at 1pm and then more preparations for tomorrow...first day of the IOP. Spirits are high...but dewpoints are low. We are hopefull that one of Wed or Thurs will shape up for some interesting weather. On those two days we have Ross Hull from the Weather Network out to see what we're up to so hopefully we can have some action for him. More later...
It was a media frenzy! Well maybe not a frenzy. There was a good turn out though. From what I recall we did newspaper interviews for the Calgary SUN and Herald, Red Deer Advocate. Radio for CBC, AM660 Calgary, and a couple of other stations I'm not familiar with. We also did TV for Global, CTV, City, and CBC. I think John and others got some pix of me looking ridiculous with a bunch of microphones in my face. In any case the response was good and positive and the whole thing didn't take too long. We don't have a TV at the townhouses so won't be able to see any of the coverage tonight but will hopefully see some taped versions. Tomorrow the Weather Network is here and it looks like we will be conducting operations with a QS dryline possible along the western regions of the UNSTABLE domain...I'm sure there will still be some bugs to work out yet like real-time GPS.
Following the media blitz we had a meeting with all the field teams and the pilots with WMI to discuss logistics. This went well. Currently the instrumented aircraft is doing an ascent along with a radiosonde (visually following it). This will provide a good baseline comparison for aircraft vs. radiosonde data. Lastly, we're tentatively looking at operations tomorrow...
Saturday 05 July 2008 - Pre-IOP
This is just a test of updating the blog from the computer that will be used for field coordination during the IOP...if you can read this it worked. I wish they'd turn some A/C on in the sciences section on weekends...it's over 30 degrees in here!
Quick update...Craig smith and his merry band of upper-air personnel are on the road to Edmonton and then Olds today. They begin the upper-air setup in Water Valley tomorrow. Andrew Sheppard is working on the tethersonde setup and making progress...interesting thing there. His cell phone is Bell and there is no signal on site for him. The ATMOS station there also uses the Bell network and we've been having communications problems there. Interestingly, my cell is TELUS and I always have signal there...maybe we've found the source of the ATMOS comms issue...
Friday 04 July 2008 - Pre-IOP
OK, so not quite a daily blog. The IOP starts next Wed. and things have been crazy getting ready. There have been some issues with NAVCANADA regarding the tethersonde, we can only fly it to 747 ft AGL due to it's proximity to WRM...wish they told us this a long time ago when we said where we were planning to put it. In any case, Andrew Sheppard is there getting things ready with Rachel Mintz from the air quality group. The modem at P3 is not communicating with us so we've lost all real-time data from there...will have to collect the data intermittently manually. The other 4 ATMOS stations are running and communicating fine. Teams are getting ready to head into the field and should begin converging in Olds on Sunday. We've gotten approval for some more $ for research flights so that we cna now fly on all 8 IODs...but also found out today the CFCAS proposal from U of M, U of C, etc. was not approved.
Aurora has been running ok but have been working with Emma Bradbury on getting forecast products ready. Today I thought we were there...until I went and tried to generate some. Hopefully she can figure out how to fix the problem before Wed...I'm sure she will as she's been a superstar for us until now. Now the products generated on Bill Burrows machine have failed...that's all the RSD fields(!) and of course Bill is on leave at the moment....
We've planned a media blitz at Olds-Didsbury airport on July 8th. Invited Global, CTV, CBC and print media from the Red Deer to Calgary area. Already did an interview for the Carstairs Courier. The Weather Network will be visiting the project on the 9th and 10th (have to confirm those dates) and the Discovery Channel is coming out on the 16th and 17th.
All in all we're getting there but I have a busy weekend ahead to get ready. We've already had a couple of drylines through the project area where the additional stations have resolved the boundary where existing stations would not have. Possibly another interesting day today with a weak dryline through the UNSTABLE domain and a risk for supercells if the buoyancy can withstand the shear....
Monday 26 May 2008 - Pre-IOP
Ramping up for the IOP has begun. ATMOS stations should be shipped to Edmonton shortly for installation on June 4-6 and 11-13. Funding approval has been received for inclusion of the tethersonde and research flights using WMI aircraft. The final helium order is underway and as you can see the operations page is under development. Smith is out this week to get the FOPEX stations up and running and Taylor and Smith will be out on the 29th to determine possible radiosonde locations within the 30NM no-fly zone around YYC as well as to inspect the tethesonde site at P3...and much more is going on as I type.
I plan to use this page as a means to convey brief updates on planning for the IOP and other highlights. During the IOP I hope to post daily updates on operations, etc. Some additional information will be found on the STATUS Message site during the IOP HERE once it is up and running. That's all for now...
Contact: Neil Taylor