Weather affects nearly all aspects of operations at Spaceport Florida on the east coast of central Florida. These operations include space launch, on-orbit and landing of the space shuttle, ground processing operations preparatory to launch, special missions such as barge and air transport of oversized components, training exercises, around the clock alerts for personnel safety and resource protection, and routine forecasting. Many of these weather support requirements are very complex and atypical from most of operational meteorology. The weather itself in central Florida can be very subtle. This is especially true during summer when a plethora of mesoscale boundary interactions dominates thunderstorm formation. These boundaries include the east coast sea breeze and west coast sea breeze fronts, the local Indian and Banana River breeze fronts, convective outflows, horizontal convective rolls, the Okeechobee lake breeze, geographically induced frictional convergence lines, washed out fronts and shear lines, and even subtle local convergences driven by inhomogeneous soil moisture and cloud shadows. Some aspects of winter weather can also be very subtle, especially forecasting peak winds in the complex frictional and stability environment caused by the many land-water boundaries in and around Spaceport Florida. Space program meteorologists use one of the most diverse and dense suite of weather instrumentation in operational meteorology to deal with these challenges. Various local mesoscale analysis, display, and prediction models are now being used.

Many mesoscale research opportunities exist to help improve weather support to the space program in central Florida. The opportunities span the range from basic research to direct operational research. For example, more work is needed in fundamental understanding of thunderstorm electrification to improve forecasting of the onset and cessation of lightning, and to improve the Lightning Launch Commit Criteria (rules to avoid natural and rocket triggered lightning strikes to in-flight space launch vehicles). Forecasting elevated point peak winds is another especially bothersome challenge. Applied research is needed for a wide range of forecaster decision aids. Operational research is needed to optimize the performance of the local mesoscale analysis, display, and forecast models and develop visualization tools to optimize forecasters use of the models. These are just a few examples of the desired research in mesoscale meteorology.

This paper will briefly survey the complex weather requirements of the space program, the subtle weather phenomena in central Florida, and the dense and diverse weather instrumentation and tools used to support the spaceport mission. Finally, the majority of the paper will outline the mesoscale research that will improve weather support to the space program.