The Human METAR

Good Morning! Just about three weeks into the internship down at Cape Canaveral, and I have already made some progress.

Currently I have 5 years of NCDC Storm Structure data for all the convective events between May and September on the KSC/CCAFS Complex. The Storm Structure data basically tells the user information about an individual convective cell on RADAR. Work performed by Andrew Loconto a few years back showed that one can possibly derive the peak wind gust from this information, however hehad a limited dataset. My next step is to go through all the files (about 4500) and determine which cell is closest to the wind tower that recorded the peak wind gust, and extract specific information and place it into a nice dataset for analysis. I am currently working on that via a perl script.

I have also seen a lot down on the complex. Yesterday alone we got to see a weather balloon go up (KXMR for you weather geeks), as well as visit the Cape Canaveral Light House, and a close view of the launch pad that contains GOES-O. Speaking of that, the Delta rocket will bring GOES-O up to space tomorrow evening, if weather permits. If all works well, GOES-O will become GOES-14 and become a backup to the weather satellites in operation. For more information, go here

and Finally, for the radar nerds (….me). Our vortex page got a new addition to the weather data database. We now have Terminal Doppler Weather Radar data for most of the United States. They work just like WSR-88D’s, but their wavelength is smaller, and so is their range. However it is “high-res” on velocity data. This is why most of the TDWR’s are located near airports, to detect low level wind shear and any turbulence in the area.

The data can be found here

After a few days of traveling and getting things settled, I have finally found myself down in Cape Canaveral just a few miles south of the Kennedy Space Center. I’ll be spending the next 10 weeks doing research for the Convective Wind project. I just hope the sun won’t kill me down here. For pics of the place, go here.

Onto some weather related news. A gentelman over at Weather Graphics has provided a very extensive report of the weather conditions prior to and during the onset of crash. Thanks to my Florida roomate Mitch for showing me this.

You can view the report here

Hey guys Happy Hurricane Season (i know im a day off…oh well)

Well after two weeks of rest and re-arranging things up at School, it’s time to leave New England once again and head to a distant state. This time it’s down south to the sunny state of Florida. I will be working at Cape Canaveral and working on my thesis research. It’ll consist of using radar data (WSR-88D and hopefully polarimetric) to forecast for convective winds at the Kennedy Space Center Complex.

Hopefully by the end of the summer I’ll have much of my thesis written, and when I come back to New England I’ll be almost done with my masters. I will try my best to keep everyone updated on my work, whether it’s here or on my social networking sites.

Speaking of that, you can follow my trip to Florida over the next 48 hours by following me on my Twitter Account!