snowfall

February 29 marked the last day of the GPM Cold Season Experiment. After six weeks of no snow, light snow, rain, and some nice heavy snowstorms, the GCPEx team is heading home. The ADMIRARI instrument at the CARE site with blowing light snow (11 Feb 2012) Credit: NASA / Chris Kidd The campaign ended with a big storm last Friday, February 24th, that put all three planes in the air over an eight hour period. They captured a wide array of different types of snow and rain from Eastern New York as the DC-8 flew in from Maine to north of the CARE site in Huronia and Georgian Bay, off of Lake Huron

View on Youtube This video shows a glimpse of operations during the NASA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Cold Season Precipitation Experiment (GCPEx) during a heavy snow event on 18 February 2012 Steve Nesbitt is an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He studies clouds and precipitation using satellite data and ground based and aircraft observations in projects world wide. Using NASA and other measurements in tropical storms, and mid-latitude cyclones, his research group works to improve the understanding of precipitation

Chris Kidd is a hydrologist at Goddard Space Flight Center. This week he is at the CARE site in Ontario and writes to us about this week's flights. Isn’t it strange how the best snow tends to occur on the same day of the week; when I was little it was always a Thursday. Last Saturday we had a good lake effect snowfall over Barrie (Ontario), this Saturday we had another 6 inches of snow. The forecast proved to accurate in terms of the timing; a 3:15 am start from the hotel to drive out to the field site and prepare for the days operations; the first flakes of snow started to fall as I arrived

Chris Kidd is a hydrologist at Goddard Space Flight Center. This week he is at the CARE site in Ontario and writes to us about this week's flights. Although the excitement of the lake-effect snow last weekend was welcome, in contrast this week was somewhat benign. There were a number of good opportunities identified in the model forecasts that didn’t really materialize, leaving us with a number of, although marginal, still useful events. The dual-frequency radar at the CARE site Friday, February 17th. The little spec in the sky is the Citation aircraft flying overhead. Credit: NASA / Chris

NASA scientist Chris Kidd shared some of his photos from the last several days at GCPEx: The ADMIRARI instrument at the CARE site with blowing light snow (11 Feb 2012) Credit: NASA / Chris Kidd The radar at the CARE site with blowing light snow (11 Feb 2012) Credit: NASA / Chris Kidd The ADMIRARI instrument operating at the CARE site (11 Feb 2012) The lights on the instrument allows remote operators to keep and eye on any snow build up on the sensors that would affect the measurements. Credit: NASA / Chris Kidd Mission operations inside the CARE trailer – which can be very cold at times! (11