A Great Month of Outreach, Education, and Radar Meteorology with DOW7

Professor Powder attempts to keep DOW7 from leaving

After more than a month in Salt Lake City, DOW7 departed the University of Utah campus and began its trip home to Boulder this morning.

It had a great run in northern Utah, despite an uncooperative Mother Nature who was quite stingy providing storms.  We exhibited the DOW for 1500 visitors at the Natural History Museum of Utah and 300 at the University of Utah.

Meteorological outreach at the Natural History Museum of Utah.  DOW in the background. 

In the DOW during sidewalk exhibit at the University of Utah

Several graduate students are now fully trained DOW operators.  Students in our cloud microphysics, synoptic meteorology, mountain meteorology and a radar special topics class were able to participate in operations either on campus or in the field.  My mountain meteorology class is presenting results this afternoon from their initial analysis of a precipitation event in the Ogden Valley.

Seven people stuffed in the DOW.  A common scene during field operations. 

Officially, we did eight "intensive observing periods", or IOPs:

IOP0- Practice IOP scanning some weak snow showers over the northern Wasatch (Location: Antelope Island Marina)

IOP1- Leeside precipitation in the Ogden Valley (Location: Huntsville)

IOP2- Frontal precipitation over the Salt Lake Valley and mountain-induced precipitation over the northern Wasatch (Location: Fielding Garr Ranch, Antelope Island)

IOP3- Exploratory effort to examine precipitation over Ben Lomond (Location: Just south of Willard Bay)

IOP4- Exploratory effort for eared grebe migration (Location: Lakepoint)

DOW near Lakepoint in the Tooele Valley scanning for eared grebes on November 25th.  National Weather Service radar imagery showed the first signs of migration last night, so the truck returned to Boulder just a little too soon. 

IOP5- Cold front with topographic interactions over Tooele Valley (Location: Stansbury Island Causeway)

IOP6- Cold front, influence of Oquirrh and Wasatch range on precipitation, small-scale precipitation structure in and around Cottonwoods (Location: South Jordan Trax Station)

DOW at the South Jordan Trax Station with frontal/orographic cloud over Wasatch

IOP7- Mountain and lake-effect precipitation (Location: Baccus Highway near 7000 South)

Mother Nature's stinginess forced us to take what we could get and do a couple of all-night operations.  IOP1 and IOP2 covered the same storm.  We just moved the DOW from Huntsville to Antelope Island as the storm slid south, changing the IOP number.  IOP6 and IOP7 were also the same storm and we just moved the radar from the South Jordan Trax Station to the Baccus Highway as the winds veered and orographic and lake-effect precipitation evolved.  Knowledge of meteorology, terrain, and potential site characteristics are a real key to making such efforts successful.  Not to mention some motivated graduate students willing to work graveyard shifts.  During such operations, we rotate crews and bring in a fresh driver for moving the DOW in the morning.

Special thanks goes to our sponsor, the National Science Foundation, and the operators of the DOW, the Center for Severe Weather Research, for making the visit possible.  The Center for Severe Weather Research extended the DOW visit a few days to let us capture our most recent storm and for that we are grateful.  I'm fairly certain that storm will make it into at least one master's thesis and maybe more.