The International H2O Project (IHOP_2002) is slated to occur 13 May to 25 June 2002 over the Southern Great Plains. During this field project, multiple instruments will be used to study convective initiation, quantitative precipitation forecasting, atmospheric boundary layer processes and the optimal future mix of instruments.

Three DOW-type radars operating at 3-cm and one SMART radar operating at 5-cm, as well as airborne radars, stationary radars, mobile mesonets, airborne and ground-based lidars, and mobile profiling systems will coordinate to study convective initiation events over a focused area. These diverse data will eventually be synthesized to give a complete picture of the evolution of the wind and water vapor fields during the initiation of convection.

As a precursor to these more comprehensive analyses, we will present preliminary multiple Doppler syntheses of initiation events from data collected by the DOWs. Convergence and vorticity features as well as the evolution of the boundary layer prior to and during initiation will be documented. Features with scales of approximately 150-300 m should be resolved with volumetric updates of only 70 seconds.