CSWR - Hurricane Rita (2005) Deployment

Hurricane Rita (2005)
For Hurricane Rita, DOW3 and the SCOUT instrumented vehicle deployed in Port Arthur late in the evening of Friday 23 September 2004. As shown in the map below, the DOW was deployed in south Port Arthur and SCOUT about 2 km to its northeast. The DOW was about 8 km SSE of the BPT airport and 8 km SSW of the Florida T5 tower. Several hours of low level, 1.2 degree, survey scans were collected with update intervals of 12 s and gate spacing of 25 m. Data were oversampled in azimuth. Peak wind velocitieis in windstreaks were in excess of 50 m/s in the vigorous northwest eyewall segment. The edge of the reflectivity eye was approximately 6 km to the east of the DOW. Visual observations from SCOUT, 2km to the northeast, but still in south Port Arthur revealed a strong visibility gradient, with higher visibility to the east. Both the RM Young and Ultrasonic anemometers were lost late in the event, but it is hoped that good data were measured through most of the landfall. Radar and in situ data are in the process of being downloaded and processed. Crews and vehicles returned to Boulder and Norman.