An interesting theme that has pervaded these first two weeks of VORTEX2 is that things are constantly going wrong with the instruments. The instruments used to collect atmospheric data are extremely sensitive, and frequently submitted to extreme conditions, and so it’s not a surprise that there are often issues with them working correctly. As a result, there is a lot of time spent in calibration and testing, pretty much every day and several times per day, to make sure that the data being collected and archived is meaningful.
As an example, the two mobile radars that I am attached to, the SMART radars (SRs), each have their own issues. SR1 had an issue with its dish having loose rivets, and as a result, the radar was scanning too low on the scans closest to the ground. Terra, the radar operator, noticed the strange measurements while scanning the storms at the beginning of the project, which led to the discovery about the rivets. This issue put SR1 out of commission for a few days while the dish was switched out, but the replacement turned out to have the same issue. Lou and Gordon fixed the problem with an engineering gem of a solution, and the fix has held up well. SR2 had and still has an issue with one the channels that receives the data, with the result that data quality is quite unpredictable, and hence the radar unusable until the problem is fixed.
The short version of this post is that observational science is hard, and that those who are work in instrumentation and data collection have a tough job, where the notion of “right answer” is fuzzy, and intuition is a necessary component of the process. We reap the benefits of their work constantly, and without thought. If I had to pick my most important lesson from VORTEX2, it would be to appreciate these scientists more.
Sean M. R. Crowell 