The USAF 45th Weather Squadron (45 WS) provides comprehensive weather support to America's space program at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and NASA Kennedy Space Center. These facilities are in the east central Florida, in ‘Lightning Alley' of the U.S. As a result, thunderstorms and their associated hazards are one of the largest operational concerns of 45 WS, especially lightning and convective winds. Plymouth State University has been researching ways to improve convective wind forecasting by 45 WS. This paper will report the latest results of this research.

An extensive analysis of wind tower peak wind, NEXRAD radar, and radiosonde observations for the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS)/Kennedy Space Center (KSC) over 11 warm (May-Sep) seasons from 1995 through 2005, provided many new insights on the forecast problem of strong convectively driven winds. Convective periods identified for this region and time frame from previous studies were further refined based on a thorough review of newly acquired NEXRAD data for Melbourne (MLB) with backup for missing data provided from the Tampa Bay (TBW) site. Synoptically driven pressure gradient cases, including those from nearby tropical cyclones were also eliminated from this study.

Preliminary results from studying high resolution radar imagery in combination with wind tower observations indicate the importance of collision events, such as cell mergers and outflow boundary/sea breeze front interactions, in triggering most strong convective wind events. The radar imagery overlaid with the high time and spatial resolution wind data also show the development of the propagation of the convective winds throughout the study area. Several examples of this behavior will be presented.

Following up on a recent study that indicated the relatively low skill level of the most widely used convective wind indices used by 45 WS forecasters, we have also started detailed analyses of KXMR soundings over the 11-year period and are in the process of developing some new indices based on some preliminary results that indicated the importance of the vertical structure and values associated with the equivalent potential temperature lapse rate. We plan to present our initial results of this study at the conference.