January 2nd, 2011

Today was the day for all ten underclassmen to arrive back to Oswego for the start of the Lake Effect Research Project.  The program officially started on January 3rd.  January 3rd was going to be the day for all underclassmen to be trained on the DOW (Doppler on Wheels) vehicle.  The DOW carries a Dual-Polarmetric radar which can scan precipitation in horizontal and vertical beams.  This allows the ability to locate rotations inside the Lake-Effect band, as well as the precipitation falling from the band.  The picture seen at the top of the page shows the DOW that will be used for Lake-Effect research.  However, weather had changed, and a Lake-Effect event was forecasted to occur from the evening hours of January 2nd through the mid afternoon on January 3rd.  They had decided to delay training the students on the DOW and gather information from this Lake-Effect band.  A few underclassmen arrived to campus early enough on the 2nd to assist the project director (Dr. Scott Steiger) and members of the Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR).  Starting at 5:30pm, we traveled to our first location, near Copenhagen, NY.  We arrived there at 7:30pm and began scanning the Lake-Effect band for the next few hours.  The students that came by were able to spend some time inside the DOW vehicle to see the type of information we were receiving from the radar.  After everything began to run smoothly with the radar for the members of CSWR, the students and Dr. Steiger traveled back to Oswego to meet with the rest of the students that had now arrived back to Oswego, and have a meeting.  Before we had our first meeting at 11pm, Dr. Steiger and the members of CSWR had decided to relocate because the band was too far south to satisfy our needs.  They moved to Williamstown, NY and arrived there around 1am on January 3rd.  After the meeting, Dr. Steiger brought four other students to visit the DOW and remained there for a few hours, before the students headed back to Oswego to get some rest.  The DOW vehicle remained in Williamstown throughout the night into the morning hours of January 3rd.