Timeline & Status

Item

11/14/07

Lake Breeze Experiment
(Wheeler Lake, AL)

 

The main goal behind MAX is to investigate tornado and severe/hazardous weather phenomena that are especially problematic in the Southeast United States. MAX is apart of a much larger project named the UAH Tornado and Hurricane Observations and Research (THOR) activity. THOR involves close collaboration between UAH and the NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center, and three entities of the National Weather Center in Norman, OK: (a) the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), (b) the NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center (SPC), and (c) the University of Oklahoma. Within NSSL and SPC, a Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) was created in 1997 to address the detection and forecasting of hazardous weather phenomena. A similar testbed is evolving in Huntsville, concerning the formation of the NASA Sport and expansion of UAH mesoscale research and instrumentation infrastructure. In order to unify this research and emphasize the close connection and collaboration between the NOAA and UAH, the SPC/NSSL and UAH/NASA testbeds were termed HWT-Norman and HWT-Huntsville, respectively. The latter is composed of the NASA Sport center, the Huntsville Weather Forecast Office (NWS/HUN), and the UAH THOR. The HWT testbeds at both locations will focus on infusing research results into operations to improve detection and forecasting of hazardous weather. The HWT-Huntsville consists of several ground based instruments which will work hand in hand with the MAX. A small sampling of these instruments include, MIPS (Mobile Integrated Profiling System), ARMOR (Advanced Radar for Meteorological and Operational Research), disdrometers, and several other surface instrumentation. Some of the main areas of research that the MAX will be a crucial components to are as follows

• Tornadoes and damaging winds
• Tornadoes and severe winds associated with QLMCS's
• Kinematics of tornadic rainbands during the landfall of tropical cyclones (TC)
• Boundary detection, interaction and prediction
• Investigate the relationships among lightning, deep convection, and severe storms
• Investigate the predictability of lighting initiation (associated with convective initiation), evolution and cessation
• Quantitative precipitation estimation and forecasting (QPE)