Initial Operations of the Front Range Observational Network Testbed (FRONT)

The Front Range Observational Network Testbed is a joint effort by NCAR and CSU to provide the research and educational user communities with streamlined access to the EOL S-Pol and CSU-CHILL NSF research radars while they are at their home base locations in Colorado. As part of this effort, a new operating site for S-Pol with improved views of both the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains and the greater Denver area was established near Firestone, Colorado during the summer of 2013. This new S-Pol location provides an excellent dual-Doppler baseline configuration with the CSU-CHILL's location near Greeley, CO. (The baseline length is 42 km on an azimuth of 211 degrees from CSU-CHILL).

While the CSU-CHILL and EOL S-Pol radars provide the foundation of FRONT, their measurements are complemented by several other meteorological sensor arrays that are resident in the region: (i) The NWS KFTG (Denver-Boulder) and KCYS (Cheyenne, WY) WSR-88D radars, (ii) The single-polarization CSU-Pawnee radar (located 47 km north of CSU-CHILL), (iii) The Northern Colorado Lightning Mapping Array (LMA), (iv) Various surface data networks (highway departments, urban flooding districts, etc.)

This poster will present examples of FRONT data collected during the initial S-Pol test operations planned for late summer, 2013. It will also provide prospective users with an overview of the procedures for scheduling FRONT field projects as well as methods for accessing archived data sets.