VORTEX2-2009 Data Archive for MWR-05XP

MWR-05XP data are provided as sweep files and organized by deployment; within each deployment, the sweep files should be found in the directory swp/.  Individual sweep files follow the standard naming convention.  The date and time in the tar file indicates the UTC begin date and time for the deployment in question.  A separate text file is embedded with the sweep files for each deployment.  The file provides additional documentation for the particular deployment (GPS location, times, sweep file parameters, problems, etc.) and background information about the radar system.  The naming convention for the text file is MWR05XP09MMDDD#.txt where MM is the V2 operational month, DD is the V2 operational day, and D# is the deployment number for that operational day (e.g., the documentation for the third deployment from the night of June 5th, 2009 has the text file name MWR05XP090605D3.txt even though data collection for that deployment began after 00 UTC). 

MWR-05XP scans electronically in elevation and mechanically in azimuth.  As a result, within a volume scan, data are obtained at different elevation angles at the same time and will have the same time stamp in the file name.  For example, the 2.5 degree and 17.1 degree elevation-angle PPI scans are obtained at the same time and will have the same time stamp within a volume scan.  The elevation angle in the file name will be different, but we have found that sweep files with the same time stamp but from different elevation angles need to be put into separate directories to be viewed correctly in SOLO.  A separate directory needs to be created for each elevation angle to view all of the data.  The text file will provide the maximum elevation angle used in a deployment (the minimum is 1.0 degrees unless otherwise noted and sampling occurs every ~1.5 degrees in elevation), and, if there were multiple maximums (e.g., if, within a deployment, the scanning was changed from 1-40 degrees in elevation to 1-55 degrees in elevation), the time period that each scanning strategy was used will be provided in order to simplify dividing up the data.

Please contact Howie Bluestein (hblue@ou.edu) or Mike French (mfrench@ou.edu) for additional information/questions about MWR-05XP data.