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RaXPol
The Rapid X-band Polarimetric Radar, commonly abbreviated as RaXPol, is a mobile research radar designed and operated by the University of Oklahoma, led by Howard Bluestein. RaXPol often collaborates with adjacent mobile radar projects, such as Doppler on Wheels and SMART-R. Unlike its counterparts, RaXPol typically places emphasis on temporal resolution, and as such is capable of surveilling the entire local atmosphere in three dimensions in as little as 20 seconds, or a single level in less than 3 seconds. RaXPol scanned the 2013 El Reno tornado, capturing wind speeds exceeding 300 mph, the second highest ever recorded. History and deployment Ever since meteorological observations on radar were first made widespread, the need for high-temporal resolution and comprehensive volumetric imagery of all three dimensions of weather phenomena has been a very high priority, due in large part to the fact that hazardous weather often happens in the span of seconds, and often in the lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2011 El Reno–Piedmont Tornado
During the evening hours of May 24, 2011, a large, long-tracked and exceptionally intense EF5 tornado, commonly known as the El Reno–Piedmont tornado or the El Reno EF5, impacted areas near or within the communities of El Reno, Oklahoma, El Reno, Piedmont, Oklahoma, Piedmont, and Guthrie, Oklahoma, Guthrie, killing nine people and injuring 181 others. After producing incredible damage in several locations along a path of more than , the tornado was given a rating of EF5 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, with peak wind speeds in excess of , although a mobile Doppler radar found that the tornado possessed wind speeds of up to . The tornado was the first F5/EF5 tornado to occur in Oklahoma since May 3, 1999, when 1999 Bridge Creek–Moore tornado, an F5 tornado devastated areas in and around the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. The tornado touched down in southwestern Canadian County, Oklahoma, Canadian County and quickly became violent, debarking numerous trees as it passed through ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2013 El Reno Tornado
The 2013 El Reno tornado was an extremely large, powerful, and erratic tornado that occurred over rural areas of Central Oklahoma during the early evening hours of Friday, May 31, 2013. This rain-wrapped, multiple-vortex tornado was the widest tornado ever recorded and was part of a larger weather system that produced dozens of tornadoes over the preceding days. The tornado initially formed at 6:03 p.m. Central Daylight Time (2303 UTC) about west-southwest of El Reno, rapidly growing in size and becoming more violent as it tracked through central portions of Canadian County. Remaining over mostly open terrain, the tornado did not impact many structures; however, measurements from mobile weather radars revealed extreme winds in excess of within the vortex. These are among the highest observed wind speeds on Earth, just slightly lower than the wind speeds of the 1999 Bridge Creek–Moore tornado. As it crossed U.S. 81, it had grown to a record-breaking widt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
X Band
The X band is the designation for a band of frequencies in the microwave radio region of the electromagnetic spectrum. In some cases, such as in communication engineering, the frequency range of the X band is set at approximately 7.0–11.2 GHz. In radar engineering, the frequency range is specified by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as 8.0–12.0 GHz. The X band is used for radar, satellite communication, and wireless computer networks. Radar X band is used in radar applications, including continuous-wave, pulsed, single- polarization, dual-polarization, synthetic aperture radar, and phased arrays. X-band radar frequency sub-bands are used in civil, military, and government institutions for weather monitoring, air traffic control, maritime vessel traffic control, defense tracking, and vehicle speed detection for law enforcement. X band is often used in modern radars. The shorter wavelengths of the X band provide higher-r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Oklahoma
The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a Public university, public research university in Norman, Oklahoma, United States. Founded in 1890, it had existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two territories became the state of Oklahoma. In Fall 2024, the university had 34,523 students enrolled, most at its main campus in Norman. Employing nearly 4,000 faculty members, the university offers 174 Bachelor's degree, baccalaureate programs, 199 Master's degree, master's programs, 101 Doctorate, doctoral programs, and 88 certificate programs. The university is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity", with over $416 million in research expenditures across its three campuses in 2022. Its Norman campus has two prominent museums, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, specializing in French Impressionism and Native Americans in the United States, Native American artwork, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Howard Bluestein
Howard Bruce Bluestein is a research meteorologist known for his mesoscale meteorology, severe weather, and radar research. He is a major participant in the VORTEX projects. A native of the Boston area, Dr. Bluestein received his Ph.D. in 1976 from MIT. He has been a professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma (OU) since 1976. Background Bluestein's masters thesis was Prediction of Satellite Cloud Patterns Using Spatial Fourier Transforms' and his doctoral dissertation was Synoptic-scale Deformation and Tropical Cloud Bands'. He is the George Lynn Cross Research Professor at the OU School of Meteorology. He was on the steering committee and was a principal investigator (PI) foVORTEX2 the field phase of which occurred from 2009-2010. Bluestein is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), served on the National Research Council (NRC) Board of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (BASC) and on the NRC Committee on Weather Radar Technology Beyond NEXRAD. Blueste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doppler On Wheels
Doppler on Wheels (DOW) is a fleet of quickly deployable truck-mounted weather radars managed by FARM (Flexible Array of Radars and Mesonets), an American research company affiliated with the University of Alabama Huntsville. The group, which started as the Center for Severe Weather Research, is led by atmospheric scientist Joshua Wurman, and is partially funded by the National Science Foundation, as part of the "Community Instruments and Facilities" program. The DOW fleet have been used throughout the United States since 1995, as well as occasionally in Europe and South America, to research hazardous and challenging weather phenomena such as tornados. The name refers to the Doppler effect at the basis of modern weather radar technology. History The first DOW platform was created and deployed in 1995, substantially changing the design paradigm of targeted meteorological studies. Ground-breaking, extremely fine-scale data was collected in tornadoes and hurricanes, as well as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SMART-R
The Shared Mobile Atmospheric Research and Teaching Radar, colloquially known as SMART-R or SR, is a mobile Doppler weather radar platform operated and created by University of Oklahoma (OU) with aide from Texas A&M and Texas Tech University in 2001. Development Throughout the early and late 1990s, several mobile radar concepts came to be, often involving high frequency X-band radars which suffer significant attenuation, and often lack in range. Ideally, these radars would serve as research and observation platforms, covering regions scarcely covered by the NEXRAD network as a whole. One such concept later went on to become the Doppler On Wheels, now a fleet of 3 operational vehicles. In order to counteract the problems previously described with high frequency radars, two decommissioned WSR-74 radars, originally used for local warnings, were acquired by TAMU. These two radars, both operating in the C-band, are less susceptible to attenuation in precipitation and have overall gre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NEXRAD
NEXRAD or Nexrad (Next-Generation Radar) is a network of 159 high-resolution S-band pulse-Doppler radar, Doppler weather radars operated by the National Weather Service (NWS), an agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) within the United States Department of Commerce, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) within the United States Department of Transportation, Department of Transportation, and the United States Air Force, U.S. Air Force within the United States Department of Defense, Department of Defense. Its technical name is WSR-88D (''Weather Surveillance Radar, 1988, Doppler''). NEXRAD detects precipitation (meteorology), precipitation and Earth's atmosphere, atmospheric movement or wind. It returns data which when processed can be displayed in a mosaic map which shows patterns of precipitation and its movement. The radar system operates in two basic modes, selectable by the operator – a slow-scanning ''clear-air mode'' for analyzing air moveme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MESO-SAILS
Multiple Elevation Scan Option for Supplemental Adaptive Intra-Volume Low-Level Scan (abbreviated MESO-SAILS), is a dynamic scanning option for the WSR-88D, controllable by the operator of the radar, when in VCP mode 12 and 212, and additionally 35 and 215 with the Build 18 update scheduled for October 2017. When active, anywhere from one to three supplemental low-level scans can be added to any volume, increasing overall low-level data availability and improves general severe weather detection, as needed. When active, per the National Weather Service, low-level updates will be available "every 75 to 90 seconds". Concept WSR-88D radars scan a number of elevation angles to scan the atmosphere around the site. The number of angles and the length of each scan depend on the meteorological situation (no precipitation, scattered, generalized, or deep convective precipitation). These schemes are called Volume Coverage Patterns (VCP). The more angles scanned, the longer between scans at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tornado Alley
Tornado Alley, also known as Tornado Valley, is a loosely defined location of the central United States and, in the 21st century, Canada where tornadoes are most frequent. The term was first used in 1952 as the title of a research project to study severe weather in areas of Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska. Tornado climatologists distinguish peaks in activity in certain areas and Storm chasing, storm chasers have long recognized the Great Plains tornado belt. As a colloquial term there are no definitively set boundaries of Tornado Alley, but the area common to most definitions extends from Texas, through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, North Dakota, Montana, Ohio, and eastern portions of Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. Research suggests that the main alley may be shifting eastward away from the Great Plains, and that tornadoes are also becoming more frequent in the n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Science Foundation
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health. With an annual budget of about $9.9 billion (fiscal year 2023), the NSF funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the List of American institutions of higher education, United States' colleges and universities. In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics, and the social sciences, the NSF is the major source of federal backing. NSF's director and deputy director are appointed by the president of the United States and Advice and consent, confirmed by the United States Senate, whereas the 24 president-appointed members of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monthly Weather Review
The ''Monthly Weather Review'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Meteorological Society. It covers research related to analysis and prediction of observed and modeled circulations of the atmosphere, including technique development, data assimilation, model validation, and relevant case studies. This includes papers on numerical techniques and data assimilation techniques that apply to the atmosphere and/or ocean environment. The current editor-in-chief is Ron McTaggart-Cowan (Environment and Climate Change Canada). History Source: The journal was first published in January 1873 by the United States Army Signal Corps, but issues were later extended back to the start of the federal government's fiscal year (July 1872). It was issued by the Office of the Chief Signal Officer until 1891. In 1891, the Signal Office's meteorological responsibilities were transferred to the Weather Bureau under the United States Department of Agriculture. The Weather Burea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
