89th American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting

Wednesday, 14 January 2009: 11:00 AM
Evolutionary characteristics of a tornadic supercell thunderstorm: Comparisons of 1.0–min Phased Array Radar and 4.2–min WSR-88D measurements
Room 122BC (Phoenix Convention Center)
Rodger A. Brown, NOAA/NSSL, Norman, OK; and J. Kurdzo and P. L. Heinselman
Poster PDF (190.3 kB)
On 24 May 2008, a cyclic tornadic supercell thunderstorm was volumetrically sampled by both the S–band National Weather Radar Testbed Phased Array Radar (PAR) in Norman, OK and the S–band WSR–88D (KTLX) located about 20 km to the northeast. This study focuses on a 55–min portion of the storm that produced a 16–km–long tornadic damage track and documents the ability of the PAR to follow changes in the storm on a minute–by–minute basis rather than on the 4.2–min basis for a WSR–88D using Volume Coverage Pattern 12. This capability to monitor a storm on such a fine time scale has the potential of permitting the researcher to discover subtle aspects of storm evolution, while permitting the forecaster to issue more timely warnings.

Supplementary URL: