Friday marked a two-fold celebration in Huntsville for Meteorologists in the Tennessee Valley as UAH celebrated 10 years since the establishment of SWIRLL – the Severe Weather Institute and Radar & Lightning Laboratories – and the beginning of a partnership with the Doppler on Wheels team, known best for their decades of groundbreaking tornado research, the news of which Tennessee Valley Weather broke in August.
Among the foremost focuses of Friday’s celebrations was the anniversary of UAHs SWIRLL, which opened it’s doors in October 2014 following years of planning following the devastating April 27th, 2011 tornado outbreak. In the outbreaks wake, then-governor Bentley of Alabama assembled the Tornado Recovery Action Council, or TRAC, to study the viability of funding severe weather research and outreach – which culminated in the councils recommendation of the construction of the SWIRLL institute.
Since opening it’s doors in 2014, the last 10 years has seen intense research by SWIRLL teams, including participation in projects such as VORTEX-SE, PECANS, PERILS, and more – many of which have a specific focus on tornadic activity and development. It’s for these reasons that the addition of the Doppler on Wheels FARM (Flexible Array of Radars and Mesonets) is expected to be so valuable.
“The addition of the FARM facility marks a monumental milestone for UAH, establishing it as the largest and most comprehensive mobile radar, profiler, and observing facility in the United States” said Dr. Kevin Knupp, principal research scientist at UAH, in a speech at the opening the ceremony on Friday.
“This partnership will enable a lot of much needed, thorough severe weather research in the Tennessee Valley”, Dr. John Christy, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Earths System Sciences Center remarked. “And that entails a lot more than just tornadoes. You can gather hydrological data, or data that can verify or refine climatology – which will all trickle down to our government and media partners who put all of the end results of this research to use in the real world. With FARM on UAHs side, the Southeast is going to stay a research leader, and UAH can expand it’s research to the Midwest and beyond.”
Since the late 1990s, UAH has also operated a robust network of various mobile observation platforms, including MAX, or Mobile Alabama X-band, a system similar in concept to the Doppler on Wheels which was built in 2007.
The Doppler on Wheels team, also since the 1990s, has operated 9 different Mobile Radar trucks, and is largely responsible for introducing the concept into the scientific mainstream, namely after the discovery of 318mph winds inside a tornado in 1999 – a record still held to this day.
