Mobile mesonet observations during VORTEX2

The second phase of the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment (VORTEX2) was carried out in 2009 and 2010 with the goal of collecting data in severe storms to address four main foci: tornadogenesis, maintenance, and demise; tornado near-ground wind fields; relationships among tornadoes, their parent thunderstorms, and the larger-scale environ- ment; and numerical weather prediction of supercells and tornadoes.

A large array of mobile instrumentation, including Doppler radars, sounding units, disdrometers, StickNet probes, tornado in-situ probes, and mobile mesonet vehicles, collected complete 4-D wind and thermodynamic fields within several storms of varying morphology (e.g., multicell, supercell, and squall line), including tornadic storms. In this paper, we summarize the data collection efforts of the mobile mesonet, comprising instrumented vehicles measuring temperature, pressure, wind, and relative humidity.