P5.9 Wind measurements within a tornado core

Tuesday, 12 October 2010
Grand Mesa Ballroom ABC (Hyatt Regency Tech Center)
Tim M. Samaras, National Technical Systems, Littleton, CO; and C. D. Karstens, B. D. Lee, and C. A. Finley

A new multi-measurement In-situ instrument has been designed and fielded to collect wind speed data a three different heights up to a maximum height of 2 meters. This instrument is also capable of collecting accurate temperature and humidity measurements in the presence of high wind and debris by using a similar radiation shield and aspiration fan system originally described by Straka, et. al., (1996) for mobile mesonet operations.

The new instrument was successfully deployed on May 22, 2010 in the path of a developing EF4 tornado west of Bowdle, South Dakota where several wind velocity measurements were taken concurrently at differing heights from .7 meters to 2 meters. The result of these measurements will be presented and compared to previous attempted measurements in the past.

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