Dr. Jeff Trapp, professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Purdue University, requested one of the CSWR mobile weather research radars for deployment to West Lafayette, Indiana from October 21 through November 18, 2009. Small student teams planned several research projects related to the occurrence of isolated severe and non-severe thunderstorms, mesoscale convective systems, frontal rain bands and lake-effect snowfall.
The University of Nebraska DOW Education and Outreach (UNDEO) project was conducted in November of 2008. UNDEO was an NSF-funded collaboration between the Department of Geosciences at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln and the Center for Severe Weather Research that allowed for a 15-day on-campus deployment of a DOW for classroom-instruction and hands-on experience.
The Pennsylvania Mobile Radar Experiment (PAMREX) used the DOW radars in the fall months of 2003 and 2004 to study a wide variety of phenomena, such as the interaction of fronts and thunderstorms with ridges and valleys, terrain-induced atmospheric circulations, and phenomena owing to atmospheric interactions with Lake Erie. The complex terrain of Pennsylvania can produce atmospheric circulations capable of triggering thunderstorms, in addition to influencing already mature thunderstorms and their attendant severe weather. Surface temperature roughness differences between Lake Erie and the land surface of Pennsylvania routinely affect small-scale weather as well with “lake effect” snow bands being perhaps the most widely known of these lake-induced phenomena.