PERiLS Mobile Profiling Observations

The Propagation, Evolution, and Rotation in Linear Storms (PERiLS) field campaign is one of the most comprehensive projects to date dedicated to improving knowledge of tornadic quasi-linear convective systems (QLCSs). The project occurred during the 2022-2023 Spring seasons and included dozens of in-situ and ground-based remote sensing platforms. A total of nine intensive observational periods (IOPs) were conducted (4 during Spring 2022 and 5 during Spring 2023) with at least 24 documented tornadoes observed by a number of PERiLS related platforms.

This presentation will focus on those observations collected via mobile profiling instruments, such as mobile Doppler LiDAR systems, radar wind profilers, and thermodynamic profilers. These profiling systems, coupled with co-located soundings, were dedicated to collecting observations to characterize the spatiotemporal variability of boundary layer kinematics and thermodynamics in the near-storm environment, the physical processes that produce this variability, and the effects on storm-scale processes. During most IOPs, mobile profilers operated in a triangular array within the broader observational domain, typically within or near multi-Doppler lobes, with operations beginning at least 4 hours prior to the arrival of deep convection in the domain. Preliminary observations suggest the low-level environment evolves rapidly beginning ~90-min prior to arrival of convection. This presentation will give an overview of the mobile profiling observations collected during PERiLS and show analyses that are in progress. These datasets are becoming available to the broader severe storms community via the NCAR EOL catalog, and as such, this presentation will also assess the overall quality of the data.