12 July 2004 0006 Heard thunder rumbling. Mammatus overhead. 0044 Gusted itself out on the west and southern side of MCS-like system. 0108 Good bright band signature in SW half. 0109 Switching back to climofar since cores are all below 13 deg elevation. 0117 Rain (light) at S-Pol. 0118 Missed 15-min mark will change to ClimoFar at 0130. 0130:10 Started it. 0145 MCS dying out. 0215 New growth well out to the SE (180+ km). 0238 Uploaded an image from 2303Z of an S-Pol PPI to the JOSS site. This was grabbed with the "import" command from a Zebra window. Ask Dave how to do this, if he's around. 0303 Tim Lang got here 15 min ago, Dave passed the baton. 0318 Radar didn't synch at 0315 and didn't catch it until now, so will have to manually restart; echoes clearing off scope; running climo far 0330 Restarted manually with climoFar, storm far off to the SE looks good, but 170 km away, 60 dBZ specks in it though. 0345 Synch ok. 0400 Synch ok, starting to get quiet out there, think the stuff earlier was the big show for tonight. 0452 Worked out how to submit to JOSS page and have image show up in radar category; fairly quiet out there, some isolated storms over the Maz area. 0517 Didn't synch again, bumping scan rate to 5.9 deg/sec (0.82 spacing). Also manually putting all the base imagery from my shift on the web; main game in town is still the small cells over the Maz area, strat rain & anvil elsewhere. 0530 Manual restart on climo far, 0 deg scan not made w/last volume. 0545 Synch ok; stopped w/30-sec to spare, not sure why synching is so tight tonight. 0615 Activity picking up over the gulf, nothing intense though. 0625 5.5 deg tops everything so will run the shallow sequence w/next update. 0630 Climo shallow started; scattered conv to south crossing into gulf, but all weak and shallow, or too far away. 0638 Modified climo shallow to go up to 6.7 on first pass, 5.5 w/ 0 deg swp on second pass; shallow now contains 14 tilts and is only run 1 time per 15 mins. 0653 Cell @ 180 km to SE looking good, but very far away. 0659 Quit almost a minute early, will watch one more iteration before dropping az rate to 5.8. 0700 Synch successful. 0730 SE system looking good, just so damned far away. !Que Mal! A lot of it off scope. 0806 Taking antenna down while I add vertically pointing to name_prof.scn 0810 Running climo shallow again, will restart at 0815; se complex in two parts, each multicellular, the old wk stuff over the water is still around, too. 0815 Restarted climoshallow manually. 0840 MCS closest approach about 120 km range now; still too far away to sweat about leaving climo mode, as much of it remains off screen still, quite intense w/<= 60 dBZ in several cells. 0851 Cells to scan with RHIs, 140, 120, 125, 140; 6.7 no longer enough, swap to climo far next update. 0900 RHIs thru various cells done, now on to climo far. 0909 Running RHIs through closest cell now that climofar topped everything; RHIs not all that spectacular; things seem pretty shallow, compared to last night. 0915 Arg, RHIs causing data dropouts on low level base scan, need to be careful here. 0924 Trying test RHIs again, will start and stop 0.8 deg scan at end to fix data problem. 0958 Lots of lightning in this storm; setting up PPI's to get more temporal resolution. will run in an ad hoc manner. 1000 Pretty well defined MCS now, although still irregularly shaped. 1010 Can fit two PPIs and some change in. 1019 Got the PPI to where I think I can do 2.75 + per 15 min cycle; leading edge broaching 80 km range. 1030 Set up now that I can probably do 3 PPIs. 1045 Tightening up vert res on this next round of PPI's; will get 2 vols; leading edge broaching 60 km; 90/135 sec -> in name_micro (far). 1100 Created NAME_adhoc.scn for playing with PPIs. Ran rain map too fast, 8 deg/sec; using name_micro angles. 1113 Some small cells within 30 km; leading edge of convection within 30 km. 1123 Switching to nr angles on next PPI; have not done a great job of topping every cell; can do 100 deg, 19 tilts and fit 1 PPI's with the rain map. 1128 Topped all but closest cell by 20 deg. 1130 Synch ok on far wide PPI scan; did not top closest cell. 1134 Trying to tighten vert res a bit. 1145 Rain a little long, cut off last PPI and restarted manually; switch PRFs to try for easier synching. 1155 Attempting to switch prf to 960 hz, otherwise it will be too hard to synch things in an ad hoc manner. Antenna stopped during switch. 1206 Running rain map, 960 Hz. Will start 135 RHI on closest cell, 135 sector centered nr 180 deg. 1210 Mistimed, need to restart on 1215. 1215 Restarted MicroNear 135. 1225 Loosely organized blob of convection passing out to sea w/ broad area of s/f precip hanging over land. Continue w/ 135 sector scan. Latest IR shows a huge cold cloud shield just beyond S-Pol's range to south. 1310 Rotated 135 deg sector to west to capture weak convection moving out to sea. 1330 Starting MicroFar now w/ 240 deg center. Only significant convection is at 270-300 deg, 60-80 km. 1356 MicroFar running ok. Changed RHI's to 287 and 298 to shoot through strongest cores now about 90 km out. Cells have strong low level convergence with possible Zdr column in some places. Kdp 0.5 deg/km. 1415 MicroFar (960 PRF) continues to run fine and looking at convection & s/f to west over gulf. 1427 Kdp ~= 1/2 dphi/dr -> 2.5 deg/km -> 125 mm/hr. 60 dbz to ~ 8-10 km. 1445 Probably will (?) radar for hour or so then come up in shallow soon- most of echo now moving beyond 120 km. Still running 135 deg FAR with center at 270. Getting echo very well. 1455 Cell at 296 deg/120 km taking on a bow shape. 1505 Core has definitely bowed with accelerated rear inflow clearly evident. 1520 Will kill scans now and let Don do some work. Maybe back up in about 1 hour. Should be fine. 1640 Scheduled work on S-Pol continues. Outside, SMO clearly visible. Lots of cirrus overhead from this morning's convection. Will this delay the onset of convection on over SMO? 1705 Bob Rilling reports that rainfall algorithm may have some problems when PRF's are switched. Can be corrected in post processing, though. 1721 Back up now in shallow surveillance. Cell we were looking at earlier is not ~ 200 km out & still going strong. Few new cells ~ 120 km to our east - in usual places! 1730 Possible sea breeze approaching coast. 1749 Sea breeze makes landfall. 1828 Low sur scans running, not much going on at present. 1847 All storms still to east beyond 120 km. 1918 Starting rain map scans since shallow surveillance going over everything. 2000 REC; switch to climoshallow to top echoes. 2020 Relatively deep cell 060/100 ~ 8 km, movement toward NW. 2038 Top on deep cell > 10 km. 2040 050/90 - cell-cell interactions, amplification 60 dBZ. 2045 CI 120-180 km east. 2140 New echo appearing in southern gulf (TC?). 2233 TC rainbands (small) moving northward (to 60 km S) (this could be the leading edge of a surge). 2330 Not much change qualitatively. Cells to North and East leaving a trail of light stratiform; system to east ~ 5 cells long - mini MCS with discrete (slow) propagation - some rapid development. 2346 Switch to climo far to top "MCS" at 70 km east - up to 60 dBZ in core. This is really a typical (weak) tropical squall line with a reasonably well-formed leading line ~ 60 km long. Top ~ 16 km at 055/70.