Preliminary assessment of the 27 April 2011 tornado outbreak using dual polarimetric and vertically pointing radar

On April 27, 2011, one of the most significant severe weather outbreaks in the last 30 years raked the Southeastern United States. Several strong and deadly tornadoes left a lasting impression on residents across Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia. Many of these tornadic storms tracked within the UAHuntsville/NSSTC THOR Center and Hazardous Weather Testbed, which includes the WSR-88D radar at Hytop, AL, the Advanced Radar for Meteorological and Operational Research (ARMOR) C-band dual polarimetric radar, the Mobile Alabama X-band (MAX) X-band dual polarimetric radar, the Mobile Integrated Profiling System (MIPS) and the North Alabama Lightning Mapping Array (NALMA). Over 12 hours of radar and observational data were collected during this significant weather event. The highlights of this incredible dataset include: high temporal dual polarimetric information on at least 8 tornadic circulations, multiple dual polarimetric debris signatures at both C and X-band, dual Doppler synthesis on an isolated long track tornadic supercell, in situ measurements (T, Td, wind) of inflow in two strong tornadic storms from a mobile mesonet vehicle and the NSSTC berm, observation of a bounded weak echo region in the vertically pointing X-band Profiling Radar (XPR), and observance of large total lightning flash rates.