16 July 2004

0220	Echoes in our area are very limited limited. Biggest features is well SE of us (150 km). Moving off SMO onto coastal plain.

0230	went to ClimoShallow - submitting status report

0300	Dave Ahijevych taking over from Rob

0500	Lots of grabage (2nd trip? AO?) over water

0628	Workstation IQ froze again. Preceded by an alarm sound.

0643	Turned IQ off and on

0823	Some stratiform rain moving in over from SE coastline

0952	Strato/cum rain breaking out along coastline to NW of radar too

0958	Cells to southeast up to 17 km AGL

1010	Called SAR and told him the status. Don will take radar down for Ka band radar work unless something lights up nearby by 6 am

1153	Keeping in ClimoShallow for unattended mode. Low-level scans show land-breeze boundary very distinctly and 2x updates would be nice.

1158 	Strong echoes along boundary, encroaching on 80 km range now. Debating ClimoFar

1800	Rob Cifelli on site. Running ClimoFar. radar went down at 1427 for Ka band work. Time loop (Zebra) from 10-14 UTC showes nice land breeze moving off from ~ S-Pol and points further south and out over the water. This feature initiated nice line of convection 50-150 km south of us. Appeared to be dissipating by ~ 14UTC. 

Side note: Bright Band visible in SF blob to our SW (~120 km distant).

Radar came back up at 1745. Currenlty, remnants of activity is in SF blob ~ s50 km SW of S-Pol. One active cell 60-80 km SW distant - may be along land breese line... and few other weak cells over water. 
currently nothing happening over land.

1810	More on cell to SW ~ 80 km distant, this is fairly active feature. top to 16 km, 40 dBZ to 8 km. Beautiful divergebnce signature aloft. ZDRs (~2dB to 7 km) and some good phase shift - making cross section.

Note: to start CIDDs on IQ, login as operatore, password "phoenix" at prompt, "start_CIDD.extra". Keep images in temp

Mazatlan sounding has more CAPE today (~818) but has significant cap at 450 mb.

1845	lightning observable with audible thunders in nearby cells to our W-SW. These cells came out of nowhere - only 10 km from here not going to bother with climo near - too close. Seemed to have formed along sea breeze that is visible in time loop. Moving W of S-Pol, oriented parallel to coastline. 

Note: profiles surface ETL data show switch from land to sea breeze at ~ 14 UTC.

1900	fine line coming N-NE off of convection location ~ 80 km SW. can only observe this in 0deg angle - not 0.8deg!

1930	switched to ClimoNear to better capture tops of cells ~ 50 km to SW (14deg was just not quite making it last sequence).

Note: checked rain gauge at 18UTZ - it was knocked over so I've removed it. I doubt there was any rain in it.

2030	cells conitnue to pop-up and down around here. following autoflow boundaries ZDR's extending to 5-6 km max, mostly max ZDR's are offset from max DBZs: cells are raining out quicklyy. activity over the gulf coninues to wane.

2100	cells forming along boundary in coastal plain to our NE. One cell is flurting with profiler sire but just too far east - so won't do profiler scans.

2200	back to ClimoFar - echo's along coastal plain (to our N) continue NW progression but most activity now 80-150 km distant

2307	Antenna stopped - reset in ClimoShallow no echoes of interest in vicinity.

2315	reset to get us back on schedule: going with ClimoFar as echo to our NW not quite toped with ClimoShallow.