From wlee Tue Apr 18 13:26:26 1995
From: wlee (Wen Chau Lee)
  
VORTEX started officially on last Saturaday. The ELDORA crew spent
part of the weekend setting up workstations and rearranging the layout
in the data center (10th floor, U. of Oklahoma Geosciences Building).
We have a total of 11 workstations in a room about 3/4 size of the
ELDORA lab.  It is tight but workable. Most of you have received a
message from Bob Rilling regarding activities in the first few days of
the project. I will not repeat details here. I will try to coordinate
the e-mail activity from ELDORA group so we don't have a VORTEX e-mail
flood in Boulder. I will also try to send a report every day back to
Boulder when I am in the field.
  
  
  
                          VORTEX REPORT  04/17/95
  
  
  
ELDORA had a successful mission today. Near the end of the 6.5 hr
flight, the Electra flew by a supercell and collected excellent
data. The maximum reflectivity of this storm was about 60 dbZ. It
showed a dramatic weak echo region. The Doppler velocity looked good,
with only a few places showing noise-like velocities. We didn't see
any P3-like noisy velocities at about 5 or 6 km altitude. Everyone on
board the Electra was very excited to about today's smooth
operation. Currently, Bob, Dick and I are still working at the data
center to get the DLT tapes copied to Exabyte tapes because the
dual-recording was not working on the aircraft (it is 11:00 CDT).
Some images will be produced by tomorrow afternoon. I will ftp them
back to Boulder so color hard copies can be generated.
  
Earlier today, the VORTEX forecast called for the merger of a dry line
and an intense upper-level cold front around western Oklahoma. The
NOAA P3 took off around 1:00 pm and Electra took off around 1:45
pm. The P3 worked close to OKC along an existing convective
line. Electra headed south to Witchita Falls, then headed west to hunt
the dry line. A few wind shift lines and a potential temperature
discontinuity had been identified in the first 4 hours of flight.
Most of the time, the Electra was flying above or within the dust
storm associated with the dry line or the cold front. ELDORA observed
clear air echo (10-20 dbZ) up to 2 km depth. Around 5:00 pm, we were
informed that a tornado was spotted southeast of OKC where teh P3 was
located.  Unfortunately, the communication between scientists on P3
and Electra was poor. We can only obtain P3's location though
pilots. Roger Wakimoto (ELDORA PI) decided not to get too close to the
P3 due to the communication problems.  The Electra still worked on the
dry line but nothing initiated along it. One hour later, Roger decided
to fly by the supercell which produced a tornado earlier. Electra and
P3 flew at different altitudes to sample this supercell. We did not
see a tornado but got very good data as described above. ELDORA worked
perfectly the entire flight except for two two-minute down periods,
and was able to recover from theses nicely. Dual-PRT mode worked well.
The maximum unambiguous velocity was +-79 m/s.
  
Tomorrow is a down day. RAF and RSF staff will obtain airport security
passes in the morning and we will work on the data after that.
  
  
Wen-Chau Lee