TTT: Transition to a Thunderstorm

Summary

This project was directed by William Winn (New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, NMIMT) to study thunderstorm development over the Langmuir Laboratory in the Magdalena Mountains in New Mexico. The primary objective was to study the processes responsible for electrification in these clouds, and for this purpose new field mills were flown on the NCAR King Air in their first operational use. Repeated passes were made through clouds that developed near the laboratory. Since many of those clouds developed lightning, the measurements will provide good documentation of the conditions accompanying electrification. Other flights concentrated on weakly electrified anvils and on calibrations and intercomparisons with the New Mexico Tech research aircraft (SPTVAR). Studies of various aspects of precipitation development will also be possible with the data, because a relatively complete characterization of the microphysical evolution of the clouds was obtained. Some auxiliary studies of experimental temperature probes and humidity sensors were conducted during this project, and the newly developed NATS was used for the first time to transmit data between the aircraft and the Langmuir Laboratory for use during operations.