March 15th Radiosonde Launches

An issue occurred with the 4 PM sounding. The first sonde I tried to use would not report temperature or relatively humidity measurements. After a few attempts and contacting Julie and Tim, I opened a second sonde which worked fine. The DOA sonde is labeled and resting on the front dash. Otherwise, the launches on this day went smoothly.

As can be seen from the morning 8 AM sounding, we had a strong surface inversion with cool temperatures, but the potential was already present for a warm day. Light cirrus/cirrostratus was present most of the day... It was probably around 400 mb as hinted by this sounding.

Light winds northerly winds throughout most of the boundary layer, a condition which would persist throughout the day.

This was the little balloon that could! It reached about 91 mb, which I believe is the highest so far for XPIA. An interesting double-tropopause feature appears evident. Further down, the warm day proceeds with a very dry boundary layer. There was a high amount of interference above 400 mb, which led to frequent signal interruption.

I'm not sure why the software cut this plot off so low. I wasn't able to get the rest of the sounding on the plot, but I may have missed something. Again, lower-level winds are weak. We do see more wind direction variation though.

This sonde was difficult to launch, as the near surface winds were very turbulent. As can be seen, the boundary layer is high, hot, and dry.

Weak winds continue, as does the wind shift to more southerly directions.

The final sounding demonstrates the reestablishment of the nocturnal boundary layer (thank goodness, it was too hot for March!) The entire profile has dried out compared to earlier conditions. Residual boundary layers are very apparent aloft in the temperature profile.

An interesting pattern exists here where weaker winds have a stronger westerly component. Otherwise, low-level winds continue to be weak overall.

Besides the unseasonable temperatures, no significant weather occurred on this day.