Deployments

All students from the upper-level classes and those who were interested in deploying with the DOW from the introductory classes participated in a one-hour training session between 5 April and 6 April. These students met with DOW technician Maiana Hanshaw in small groups of 1–2 students. These training sessions introduced students to the basic procedure to operate the DOW radar and prepared each student for participation in DOW deployments.

Table 1: DOW deployment dates.

 
Date Deployment Type # of Student Participants # of Attendees for Outreach Event
07 April Outreach 3 60
10 April Outreach 4 120
11 April Operations 8 n/a
12 April Outreach 5 75
14 April Outreach 5 250
15 April Operations 3 n/a
16 April Operations 7 n/a
  1. 7 April 2018: This day featured the first DOW outreach activity. The DOW was parked in a central location on the HWS campus during an admission visit day. Perspective students and families along with current HWS students were able to visit the DOW over the course of the multiple-hour event.

     
  2. 10 April 2018: During this outreach event, the DOW visited Midlakes (Phelps–Clifton Springs) High School. Five separate science classes (~120 students) toured the DOW radar and had opportunity to view the outreach posters to discuss severe weather and weather radars. In addition, HWS faculty and student participants provided a brief question and answer session with the Midlakes students lasting about 15–20 minutes per class.

     
  3. 11 April 2018: This was the first operational deployment for the DOW. On this day a relatively weak system brought light rain to the Geneva, NY region. The DOW was deployed just to the south of Geneva and sampled the precipitation for nearly 6 hours. Students experimented with various sampling strategies as part of this first operational deployment.

     
  4. 12 April 2018: The DOW was parked near the center quad of the HWS campus on this day as students from Professor Laird’s GEO 182 toured the radar. In addition, a number of HWS students and staff stopped by the DOW and were given impromptu tours by the DOW radar technician, Prof. Metz, and upper-level GEO students. A photo from this event is shown below.

Photo is courtesy of HWS Office of Communications.
  1. 14 April 2018: The largest outreach event occurred at the FLX Maker Fest at the Phelps, NY public library. This activity featured multiple exhibits dedicated the robotics, programming, engineering, science, and more. In addition to having visitors tour the DOW, HWS faculty and students set up an exhibit inside the library where they discussed meteorological instrumentation and weather in general with the many attendees.

Photo is courtesy of N. Laird

 
  1. 15 April 2018: The second data collection deployment of the GEO-WIND–HWS-III project occurred to immediately to the south of Geneva as the dual-polarization radar sampled an area of mixed-phase precipitation associated with the warm front of a slow-moving extratropical cyclone. Data was collected during a ~4 hour period when freezing rain fell throughout the region. This precipitation was particularly notable because freezing rain is extremely rare in this area during the middle of April.

Photo is courtesy of HWS Office of Communications.
  1. 16 April 2018: The final operational deployment of the project also occurred just to the south of Geneva as the trailing cold front associated with the same system that brought the freezing rain into the region on the previous day passed through. This deployment was broken up into two different portions, with students deployed in the morning hours focusing on precipitation in the prefrontal environment and students in the afternoon focusing on precipitation associated with the cold frontal passage itself.