CSWR operates a fleet of instrumented mobile mesonet vehicles. These are equipped with standard instruments, measuring wind, temperature, and relative humidity, mounted far forward at 4 m (13.5 feet) AGL to avoid vehicle slip stream. Mobile mesonet deployments have been requested by several research projects, including VORTEX2, ASCII, OWLeS, and ROTATE to augment/compliment DOW and other observations aloft.
CSWR operates an array of approximately 20 rapidly deployable ruggedized “PODs” (pictured at right). These collect standard meteorological observations of temperature, relative humidity, wind velocity and pressure at 1, 1.5, and 2 m AGL (depending on configuration), and video or time lapse photographs. They were initially designed for tornado and hurricane low-level wind and damage studies, but their use as general-purpose quickly deployable weather stations make them ideally suited to gather data in a variety of projects. They were requested for and/or deployed in ASCII, OWLeS, ROTATE, VORTEX2, PECAN and several educational projects to augment DOW observations aloft and provide educational benefit. Up to 3 PODS can be deployed including disdrometers. Roughly 4-5 pods can be transported in the back of each CSWR mobile mesonet vehicle. PODs are usually provided, at zero cost, to educational and outreach missions.
Researchers can request mobile mesonet or Pod deployments with or without DOWs.
