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. The 45 WS uses a mesonetwork of 44 weather towers over a 1,200 Km2 area to help predict convective winds among other weather and Range Safety requirements. Budgetary considerations are forcing the 45 WS to justify the cost-effectiveness of this mesonet, along with other weather sensors. As part of their research to improve convective wind forecasting by 45 WS, Plymouth State University is evaluating the utility of the wind towers in convective wind forecasting. This paper will report the results of this study.

A prior 11-year climatological study indicated that the western towers along the Indian River showed a significantly lower incidence of strong convective winds. However, this climatology eliminated most of westernmost inland towers because they had inconsistent reporting throughout the study period and did not meet the minimum data availability threshold. These are where most of the towers eyed for potential elimination are located.

In order to assess the impacts of these towers on the convective wind problem, we've added back all the available tower data into the 11-year (1995-2005), warm season (May-Sep) climatological database and will rerun the statistics for already identified convective periods over that span. This study will also include simulating objective convective wind forecasts using data from the entire mesonet and comparing its performance to those same cases where certain groups of weather tower data are denied.