Preliminary Results and Report of the ROTATE-2008 radar / in-situ / mobile mesonet experiment

The ROTATE-2008 experiment employed one mobile DOW radar, 5 vehicles instrumented as mobile mesonets, one armored and instrumented tornado penetration vehicle (the TIV), and a deployable array of 12 in situ instruments with redundant wind, T, and RH instrumentation. A new vehicle tracking system was used and the logistics of close-in supercell intercepts with fleets consisting of over a dozen vehicles and up to 35 participants were tested. A new upgraded DOW was tested. Radar data were collected in approximately 20-25 tornadoes, with in situ data in several tornadoes (both in and out of the radar-defined core flow region) and tornadogenesis regions, some in conjunction with the TTU sticknet array. This presentation will discuss the ROTATE-2008 program, how it relates to the VORTEX2 project, and how scientific objectives tackled in ROTATE will be modified and extended in VORTEX2.