PRESTORM: PRESTORM

Summary

Prestorm occurred during May and June, of 1985 and was centered around and to the south of Witchita, Kansas NCAR Doppler radars CP-3 and CP-4 documented the internal air motion and reflectivity structure with the specific objective os showing a higher-resolution, more complete picture of the stratiform regions and their relationship to the convective regions.. The project involved fourty-two PAMII stations, and for the first time, the full PAM field base station. The stations were deployed in the midst of other observing systems including rawindsondes, profilers, doppler radars, lightning detection systems, and aircraft. Two PAM stations were co-located with NSSL Surface Automated Mesonet stations (SAM) in the southern portion of the network. The objectives of the study were to deploy, operate and coordinate the efforts of a large collection of measurement systems over a regional area as a preliminary shakeout of techniques to be utilized in the full scale STORM experiment. The broad science effort involved forecasting, detection and intensive study of midwestern mesoscale convective storm systems (including super-cells and storm clusters), from their development through their evolution. Data collected by the PAM network was of high quality, but one noteworthy problem was discovered. Wet bulb errors were induced by brass sleeves used to protect the PRTs from moisture damage. Once discovered, extensive in-field intercomparison data were taken using Assman psychrometers. This technique permitted data correction to be employed to adjust the original PAM wet bulb data set.