A Unique Look into Hurricane Matthew: High-Resolution Wind and Precipitation Observations Using the NASA Tropospheric Doppler Radar Wind Profiler and Other Multi-Frequency Weather Surveillance Radars

Hurricane Matthew threatened to go down in history as one of the most intense hurricanes to make landfall in the United States in recent times. In early October 2016, as a Category 3 storm, Hurricane Matthew tracked up the eastern coast of Florida with the eyewall located mere miles from the coastline. As the system neared the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, the NASA 48 MHz Tropospheric Doppler Radar Wind Profiler (TDRWP) began observing high-resolution wind characteristics. In addition, multiple weather surveillance radar retrievals, including the National Weather Service WSR-88D S-Band located in Melbourne, Florida, and the C-Band weather radar located at Patrick Air Force Base, provided information on wind and precipitation features. Additional details on the TDRWP hardware can be found in a companion paper (McLaughlin et. al., 2017).

This study seeks to investigate the wind characteristics of Hurricane Matthew using data collected from the NASA 48 MHz TDRWP. Analysis of the four-beam system will include a focus on individual beam characteristics as well as inhomogeneity across beams and the associated changes with range from the lowest gates near the surface up to 18 km. Characteristics associated with the storm structure and evolution will also be evaluated using both TDRWP data as well as weather surveillance radar data to get a complete understanding of the system morphology as it tracked near the instrumentation.