14 August 2004 0015 Still running ClimoFar. Most of the convection has died off. Stratiform echoes are the only things evident in the radar scope, with the exception of the convective cell to the NE at ~ 120 km. 0100 In the last 45 minutes I have been watching most of the convection dying out. 0130 Switching to ClimoShallow... 0207 nothing to add.... 0300 again, nothing to watch, except the usual 30 dBZ from bugs! 0400 James Done arrives. Looks like a climo-shallow kinda night. 0730 Land breeze propagating off-shore. 0840 Isolated weak and shallow cells along the land-breeze. 0915 In view of the priorites for data collection I switched the radar to microfar90 centered at 185degrees to capture the lifecycle of the developing cells along the land-breeze front. Strongest cell (45-50dBZ) is currently about 70km away at 156deg. Now, cells are forming ~30km from radar over the ocean. Just about topping them at 14deg elevation. 1015 Switched to micronear90 to scan the top of a cell 35km from the radar. The far cell is dying. 1030 The previous sequence started 10 seconds late so I stopped it 10 early to resynch to the 15 minute mark. It didn't matter because there was nothing in the top elevation scan anyway. 1045 Switched back to microfar90 since the near cell was becoming less deep. 1115 Switched to climo-shallow because the land-breeze convection had died out. Outside temperature 81f and dew-point 80f. The ground is dry(?) 1120 New cells entering the radar scope just off shore at 153 degrees. Infra-red imagery shows this to be further isolated cells. 1145 The 1145 sequence didn't start for some reason, so I started it manually at 1149. Will cut this one short to resynch to the 15min mark. 1200 Nesbitt and Dolan here - saw some lightning strikes near Mazatlan - probably associated with land breeze convection south of Mazatlan 1245 Cells well to south seem to be in the dissipating trend, new cell on LBF at 175/60 km 1351 Radar down - transmitter check 1355 Radar back up 1400 ClimoFar - 4 Cb's on LBF 1420 Radar down again - transmitter problems 1430 Missed rain scan - we will be down for a while it seems 1530 Not much on visible satellite picture - except LBF storms offshore 1708 Still down - no estimate when back up 1710 Wasp in science trailer - eek! 1749 Lots of fair weather Cu outside E of SBF 1841 back up in climo far - transmitter fixed, for now. will resynch at 1845 1845 resynched in ClimoShallow 1847 al's hard work was for naught - there is nothing on the scope anyway 1855 radar down again - stopped working at 1847 after 1.3 deg scan 1920 back up running climofar - will resynch at 1930. there was a problem with the phase shifter - al bypassed this and the system seems to be working. 1930 Climoshallow 2000 Lang here. Pretty dead out there, visually nothing much building over the mtns, much less appearing on the scope. 2100 Some weak cells over mtns and to our far north, ClimoShallow tops everything still. 2125 Decent storm 120 km to SE, 50+ dBZ, but still far away enough to be topped by ClimoShallow. 2130 Switched to ClimoFar to ensure topping of this storm. Visually, the storm is still building and lacks an anvil. Storm might be a good microphysical case but it is too far out. 2223 Scattered moderate-strength convection continues over mountains. Still not tempting enough to switch PRFs and do sectors. I would classify it as garden variety, basically everything topped by 7.9 deg and is 90+ km out. 2239 New growth near 60 km, 60 deg. Switching PRFs. 2245 MicroFar135 centered on 60 deg, RHIs on the 60 deg, 60 km cell. 2254 RHIs reveal a couple pixels of 60 dBZ aloft. Might qualify as an "intense, isolated storm". 2303 Movie loop shows systems mainly confined to mtns, with little motion. 2309 RHIs much less impressive. Storm appears to be collapsing. 2315 Manual resync to keep timing intact. RHIs to cell at 85 km, 95 deg. 2323 RHI was pretty boring. 2332 RHIs to new growth near 47 deg, 71 km. 2351 RHIs to cell near 37 deg, 50 km. 2355 Rotating PPIs a bit CCW to cover some precip to NW. Sector is covering just about every bit of precip out there, so will remain in this mode for the foreseeable future.