The MC3E team gathered to hear the weather forecast for April 22, the first day of the campaign.The day before official MC3E operations begin has created a lot of excitement for the science team as they converge in Central Oklahoma and complete final preparations for the campaign. After a few weeks of informal pre-campaign weather briefings via telecom, we all met at the Ponca City airport this morning for our first real weather briefing and mission scientist discussion.
The UND Citation aircraft, in the hangar at the Ponca City airport. Daniel Hartsock (SGP site scientist team) led the forecast discussion, which calls for a good chance of precipitation for the first few days of the experiment, possibly shaping up to a nice event over the SGP site on Easter Sunday. Ed Zipser (University of Utah) and Steve Rutledge (CSU), the two NASA mission scientists for the beginning of the experiment, discussed possible operations by the NASA ER-2 on its ferry flight to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska tomorrow. There was definitely excitement in the room as everyone anticipates a good start to the campaign.
After the briefing, Mike Peollet (UND) gave a quick tour of the UND Citation, which will be based at the Ponca City airport and providing in situ microphysics observations. As everyone migrated out to the SGP Central Facility, a light rain began to fall–perfect for a test of many of the precipitation-sensing instruments deployed for MC3E. Official operation will begin tomorrow morning, April 22, with the simultaneous launch of the 6:30 AM radiosonde from each of the six MC3E launch sites.
Editor’s Note: Mike Jensen is the principal investigator for the MC3E field campaign.
