Progress Report

Progress Report

Week of October 1, 2001

Completed data from and updated web site for the 20010725, 20010717, and 20010809 cass.
Started processing the 20010814-16 case.

Mid August to Late September

Held a group meeting on August 20, 2001. Read group minutes here.
In late August our Linux server (AKA"Harry") suffered a power supply and hard drive failure. In the ensuing month, we ordered more memory (for a total of about 750 MB of RAM) as well as an additional hard drive to accompany the newly replaced one (for a total of about 150 GB).
Finished writing the 4th version of our Meso/SCIT filtering program. This latest edition searches for coincident SCIT cells within a radial distance around each meso.
Preliminary draft of NSF proposal is finished.
Reran March 28-29, 2000 KFWS case with the algorithms in Southern Hemisphere (AKA"Anticyclonic") mode. <note to self: insert link here>
We have run all of our archived 2000 cases as well as the 2001 cases through May.

Mid July to Mid August

Week of July 16, 2001

We were detecting a large number of strong mesos just north and south of the KFWS site as well as a very large number of weak mesos at a range of 147 KM. Discovered we were not running the dealiasing algorithms. The 147 KM detection's are a result of faulty dealiasing with certain VCP and PRF combinations.
Increased the SSAP delay. We noticed that HIRES was running too fast for SSAP to keep up. As a result, SSAP was grabbing nonsequential tilts and creating it's own incorrect volume scans. We began tweaking playback for optimum HIRES delay so that SSAP does not get confused.
Begun work on NSF proposal. Preliminary outline almost ready.
Held a meeting between Greg Stumpf, Tom Jones, Jason Levit, and Kevin McGrath to discusses NSF and other issues.

- Determined that differences observed between Greg's detection's and ours are due to dealiasing differences in the KTLX case.
- See meeting minutes for additional details.
Ran cases...

- 20010411and 2000302-3 KFWS cases in playback...both considered final runs.
- 20000310 for KFWS
- 20000326 for KFWS
- 20000415 for KFWS
- 20010311 for KFWS

Week of July 9, 2001

- 20010410-12 and 20000302-03 for KFWS.

Week of July 2, 2001

Discovered the solution to the volume scan reset problem, which was resulting in corrupted algorithm output. Solution involves using a script ("playback") which mimics WDSS real time mode.
Determined we are getting sporadic data outages and corruption. However, NSSL's data are not suffering these ailments.
Created script to convert level 2 data with LDM extensions to RIDDS extensions.

Week of June 25, 2001

- 20010527-28 for KAMA, KINX, KLBB, and KSRX (KFWS data feed was down).
- 20010621-22 for KAMA, KFWS, KINX, KSRX, and KTLX (KLBB data feed was down).

Week of June 18, 2001

Made freq. Vs range plots and MR Vs range plots for 4 radars...specifically KTLX and KFWS for 20010410-11 and KSRX and KINX for 20010603.
Ran 20010604 KTLX case. Good meso tracks evident.
Radar ingest back as of June 19.
Ran May 17-18 KFWS case for Adam.
Updated web site progress report and posted new ArcView plots and statistical charts.

Week of June 11, 2001

Looks like the 20010208 AMA run from Friday worked O.K. In order to get Adam Lopes (REU student) some decent KFWS data we looked in our archives for the shortest event (attempting to avoid VCP numbering errors). We ran WDSS on the April 11, 2001 data. The output from this was then pasted into ArcView along with the KTLX data from the same period to produce a mosaic.
Noticed an abnormal amount of detection's within 2 KM of each site as well as within a ring extending from 148 to 152 KM from the radar's.
Met with Dr. Snow and Dr. Droegemeier to discuss problems.
Setup account on Harry for Josh Palmer to ftp KINX data over to NSSL where he'll attempt to fix it using "a2fix".
Ran cases...

- 20010410 for KFWS
- 20010603 for KINX and KSRX
- 20010604 for KTLX and KAMA (KLBB data feed was down)

Week of June 4, 2001

Radar ingest died on June 6.
Discovered the secret to DVD formatting.
Archived data to DVD disks.
Discovered the need for recording storm motion and freezing levels.
Discovered problems with radar data:

- Corruption w.r.t. KINX and KSRX 20010519-21 cases.
- Volume scan number issues with any case > 24 hours.

Week of May 28, 2001

Decided to accept out results from WDSS as "close enough" to Greg's.
Looking at our Hires images, Greg's extra detection's appear to be a result of differences in dealiasing

Week of May 21, 2001

Brandon fixed bugs on Harry. Soft mounts are now functional as well as the DVD drive.
Wrote a Perl script that uncompressed *.raw files into *.ridds files.
Started to analyze KINX data archived from the Sunday 20 May 2001 tornadic event.
KFWS RIDDS box failed on May 24th and was repaired on June 4th.

Week of May 14, 2001

Successfully used NSSL scripts to convert FSL formatted soundings into a format accessible by WDSS.
Received copies of NSSL's NX files from the April 10th event. Jason ran this data through WDSS in archive mode and the results are very close to those generated at the Lab.
Began to compile a notebook of important documents associated with this project.

Week of April 23, 2001

Installed ESRI ArcView 3.2 GIS software for plotting detection's based on lat/lon information.
Had meeting with McGrath, Jones, Stumpf, and Levit regarding Near Storm Environment (NSE) and Anti-aliasing algorithms. Also discussed the incorporation of sounding data into wdss.
Began analyzing fort.40 files which comprises of TVS and Meso detection's along with Date, Time, Lat, Long, etc.
"Harry" machine experienced file structure corruption during a OS upgrade. Most data was eventually recovered but the purity of such data was questionable. It was decided to recover all radar data originally of interest from the CAPS tape archive.

Week of April 9, 2001

Week of April 2, 2001

Got "Harry", the new Linux PC, up and running.
Successfully ran the algorithms via Harry and collected data on Thursday April 5, 2001.

Week of March 26, 2001

Plotted the Feb. 9, 2001 mesos for the remaining 3 radar's, FWS, LBB, and SRX.
Received Gateway PC. GCN office began configuring system and installing Redhat.
McGrath began to learn the Perl programming language.
Looking into a Level-II viewer. Discovered UCAR's Solo program. Once the Linux PC is operational we'll attempt a successful installation.

NEXRAD and WDSS data was collected from the 6 radar's for a severe weather-producing front that moved through the area Sunday March 11^th.
Used Excel to find the 3 longest-lived mesos from the FWS site. Generated a plot.

Week of March 5, 2001

Constructed the first plot of mesocyclones. Basic data was extracted from the fort.34 files and imported into Excel. Once in Excel, the data was in a format that Matlab and KaleidaGraph were able to use.

First plots showed polar distributions of meso locations. Subsequent plots incorporated mesocyclone Strength Indices (MSI).

Updated: Wednesday 3 October 2001