Establishment and instrumentation of the Kessler Farm Field Laboratory piconet

Rain gauge networks are used worldwide to provide information regarding local rainfall and variances thereof over large areas. Most of these networks, however, are on regular grids in which the distance between each gauge is several kilometers or more. Since most convection is on a much smaller scale than the gauge spacing found in the networks, a higher resolution network is required to examine small-scale variabilities within any given storm.

Currently, a PicoNet is being developed to install at the Kessler Farm Field Laboratory (KFFL) near Purcell, Oklahoma. This PicoNet will consist of 6 different rain gauge sites variably spaced over a 350-acre property. Unlike other networks, the KFFL PicoNet will have gauge-to-gauge spacing of only several hundred meters, with a maximum spacing between any two locations of 1.5km. This high-resolution network will allow researchers to observe the small-scale variabilities in convective precipitation, and then in turn, compare these findings to the estimated precipitation intensities reported by the KTLX and KOUN radars to test rainfall retrieval algorithm accuracies.