Wind Profilers to Aid with Monitoring and Forecasting of High-Impact Weather in the Southeastern and Western United States

Abstract

ith funding provided by the 2012 Disaster Relief Act (Sandy Supplemental), NOAA?s Earth System Research Laboratory Physical Sciences Division has installed three Doppler wind-profiling radars and surface meteorology towers along the U.S. Gulf and southeast coasts to help detect and monitor landfalling tropical storms and other high-impact weather events. This same combination of instruments has been used to monitor landfalling atmospheric rivers on the U.S. West Coast. For this reason, we refer to the whole collection of instruments at each site as an Atmospheric River Observatory (ARO). These three new AROs supported by the Sandy Supplemental complement a fourth ARO deployed in coastal North Carolina as part of NOAA?s Hydrometeorology Testbed Southeast Pilot Study. These four AROs were installed in time to capture the 2014 hurricane season and will be operated through the 2015 hurricane season.