Mobile soundings during VORTEX2: Survey and preliminary results

The Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2 (VORTEX2) was held in the central U.S. during May and June of 2009 and 2010. Among approximately 50 instrumented vehicles fielded for VORTEX2 were four mobile GPS advanced upper air sounding (MGAUS) systems. During 2009 we made 217 successful launches on 21 different operations day, and during 2010 we made 364 successful launches on 30 different operations days. Firstly, the MGAUS teams were responsible for pre-convective soundings; these soundings were used for VORTEX2 targeting decisions, were transmitted in real time to operational forecasting centers, and will be foundational to NWP and data assimilation studies of the VORTEX2 cases. Secondly, the MGAUS teams were also responsible for storm-scale soundings when the VORTEX2 armada intercepted potentially-tornadic storms; these soundings documented the temporal and spatial variability of the thermodynamic and wind profiles in and near the target storms. The extended abstract / oral presentation will document the sampling strategies employed and will discuss some of the preliminary scientific findings that emerge from the soundings dataset.