Vortex II Forecast Data - forecast_20100518150000Z_run001

The Vortex2 project (http://www.vortex2.org/home/) supported 100 scientists using over 40 science support vehicles participated in a nomadic effort to understand tornados. For the six weeks from May 1st to June 15th, 2010, scientists went roaming from state-to-state following severe weather conditions. With the help of meteorologists in the field who initiated boundary conditions, LEAD II (https://portal.leadproject.org/gridsphere/gridsphere) delivered six forecasts per day, starting at 7am CDT, creating up to 600 weather images per day. This information was used by the VORTEX2 field team and the command and control center at the University of Oklahoma to determine when and where tornadoes are most likely to occur and to help the storm chasers get to the right place at the right time. VORTEX2 used an unprecedented fleet of cutting edge instruments to literally surround tornadoes and the supercell thunderstorms that form them. An armada of mobile radars, including the Doppler On Wheels (DOW) from the Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR), SMART-Radars from the University of Oklahoma, the NOXP radar from the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), radars from the University of Massachusetts, the Office of Naval Research and Texas Tech University (TTU), 12 mobile mesonet instrumented vehicles from NSSL and CSWR, 38 deployable instruments including Sticknets (TTU), Tornado-Pods (CSWR), 4 disdrometers (University of Colorado (CU)), weather balloon launching vans (NSSL, NCAR and SUNY-Oswego), unmanned aircraft (CU), damage survey teams (CSWR, Lyndon State College, NCAR), and photogrammetry teams (Lyndon State Univesity, CSWR and NCAR), and other instruments.The input data for this forecast includes the following: Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) data downloaded from NOAA with a 13km resolutionfor forecast date 20100502 at 06Zwith data for hourly offsets from 08 to 22. The file format for this input data is grib. The forecast is initialized based on ARPS Data Analysis System (ADAS) Real-time meteorological data assimilation netgrdbas files with CONUS coverage at 10km resolution produced hourly by CAPS at Oklahoma University that uses the netCDFfile format. The data is for 20100502 at 13Z.This paricular collection contains namelist.input, cape.zip, radar.zip, precip.zip, surface.zip, updraft_helicity.zip, vorticity.zip, xsec.zip, and wrfout_d01_2010-05-02_13_00_00.nc.namelist is configuration file of WRF. cape is short for Convective Available Potential Energy, a measure of the instability in an air mass. cape.zip is the visualization of cape and contains 24 png files. radar is Mix of radar minimum and radar maximum visualizations. radar.zip represents the mixed results of putting those two radar types together. radar.zip is the visualization of vorticity and contains 28 png files. precip is short for Precipitation, the sum of the rain, snow and hail in given in liquid equivalent depth. precip.zip is the visualization of precip and contains 4 png files. surface is meteorological parameters on the earth's surface, or in a model on the first level above the ground. surface.zip is the visualization of surface and contains 16 png files. updraft_helicity is the dot product of the vertical velocity and the vertical vorticity. It is presented as a summation over a 3-km depth. updraft_helicity.zip is the visualization of updraft_helicity and contains 16 png files. vorticity is the localized rotation of the air. In model plots it is often the vertical component of vorticity, the rotation of the horizontal winds. vorticity.zip is the visualization of vorticity and contains 16 png files. xsec is is the cross section. xsec.zip is the visualization of xsec and contains 51 png files. wrfout_d01_2010-05-02_13_00_00 is computational result of WRF