Project Overview
A cold front is defined as the leading edge of a cooler and drier mass of air. The air with greater density wedges under the less dense warmer air, typically causing the formation of a narrow line of showers and thunderstorms when enough moisture is present.
Purdue University's Front Intercept Team (PUFIT) recently began work on a project to better understand the effects of the passage of cold fronts. The main objective of this student group project was to collect data through a series of weather instruments placed in strategic locations throughout Indiana and Ohio.
The project sought to prove or disprove a list of hypotheses created by the Team. These hypotheses included: analysis of surface temperature gradient and pressure gradient being directly proportional to surface wind direction and speed with the passage of a cold front; the strength of potential temperature and wind direction and speed leading to frontogenesis or frontolysis; and the classification of inactive/active cold fronts.
System Description
The PUFIT team selected the following locations to setup temporary weather stations: Crown Point, IN; Muncie, IN; Indianapolis, IN; Vincennes, IN; and Dayton, OH. At each of these sites, a NexSens weatherPACK system was selected to simultaneously measure the weather parameters in question. weatherPACK is a PC-based portable weather station system consisting of a Vaisala WXT510 Multi-parameter weather sensor, weatherVIC software, 100' PC cable, and AC adapter.
Using a laptop computer and NexSens weatherVIC software, data was collected during a three-week period from October 8, 2007 to October 30, 2007. The parameters recorded were wind direction (degree), wind speed (m/s), station pressure (hPa), air temperature (C), relative humidity (%), and total rainfall (mm). Weather parameters at each site were recorded every ten minutes over the three-week period resulting in a minimum of 2,782 data points per location.
At the end of the study, the weather data was brought back to Purdue University for further analysis. This analysis included plotting the time series of weather data parameters collected, including temperature, relative humidity, pressure, wind speed and direction, and rainfall.
With this information, PUFIT aims to gain insight into cold frontal passage and evaluate the hypotheses listed above.
