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This gallery features highlights from the University of Washington's Kuwait Oil Fires photo gallery. To see the complete gallery, please visit http://carg.atmos.washington.edu/.

This gallery features highlights from the University of Washington's FIRE-ACE-SHEBA photo gallery. To see the complete gallery, please visit http://carg.atmos.washington.edu/.

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.

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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

This project was very successful in introducing students at HWS to the field collection of weather radar data. While a number of students who participated in the project were already majoring in Geoscience with a concentration in atmospheric science, a number were still undeclared first-year/sophomore students. Out of this undeclared pool of students, a number subsequently declared a major, with some expressing interest in conducting field research. Professor Laird had multiple students from his GEO 182 class train on the DOW.

The outreach events and tours of the DOW radar were very successful in large part from the participation of HWS students. They played a large role in interacting with the people of all ages visiting the DOW radar. The student discussed a variety of weather-related topics with visitors, as well as discussing the workings of the DOW radar when visitors had a chance to climb inside the DOW radar. Not only did our students gain hands-on experience with a weather radar and enhance their understanding of radar operations and data, they also gained experience in discussing and presenting scientific information with the general public. The informational posters were a successful resource for providing information to DOW radar visitors on several aspects of weather radars and weather systems.

A sampling of outreach posters used during GEO-WIND-HWS-II outreach events are included below. Posters were displayed at locations surrounding the DOW radar during outreach events to promote discussion with visitors while waiting to tour the inside of the DOW radar. Click to enlarge images.

HWS places significant focus on undergraduate research by developing opportunities in class during the academic year, as well as offering student opportunities to conduct more comprehensive research projects during the long-running Summer Research Program on the HWS campus. The real-time collection of data and the dissemination of information during outreach events about weather research and the opportunities to study atmospheric science as part of the Geoscience curriculum at HWS were of benefit to the students. These opportunities piqued many students interest and four of the students who participated in GEO-WIND-HWS-II applied to work in the 2018 HWS Summer Research Program and were accepted.