OTREC-Nuquí team: ready, set, go!

Early morning on August 5^th, the OTREC-Nuquí team were able to observed a nice looking storm standing right in front of our hotel and near the coast over the far E. Tropical Pacific. The convective systems was relatively organized: it had a grey low-level shade area due to the heavy rain, the outflow boundary spreading towards the coast, a big convective tower above --highlighted by the bright early morning sun--, and a well-defined anvil (see picture below). After a few minutes, we turned into the satellite imagery and realized this convective cell was just the edge of a massive mesoscale convective system that extended all the way from our shore to Panamá Pacific coast and as far as 250 miles WNW.  It was very difficult to grasp our minds around the magnitude of the mesoscale convective systems taking place at that moment. It was a great start to what we hope will be a parade of convective systems, arguably over the rainiest spot over the oceans. 

Convective systems scene on Aug 5^th at 9:34 AM. Photo taken looking NW from Nuquí, Colombia.

GOES-16 longwave IR (Ch14) 2019/08/05:1450 UTC. White circle shows location of convective cell described above. Source http://catalog.eol.ucar.edu/otrec

Later that day, we assembled the radiosonde system, which turned out to be a complete adventure. The hotel and our sounding system site/office, a three story building, was eventually going to block the sounding radio signal.  The Nuquí team quickly engineered a solution and found a local handyman to execute it.  The solution was to setup the antenna right next to the rooftop as shown below.

(Top left) blueprint of structure to hold the antenna; (bottom left) Alfredo, our handyman, and close look of the final structure holding the antenna, (right) tadaaa, an antenna with a great view of the sky.

Juliana and Luisa performing their first sounding “ever”. 

Nuquí’s first sounding “ever” showing a very wet and relatively cold low-level (1010-900 hPa) westerly flow.

Our first sounding launching (Aug 6, 00 UTC) was surprisingly normal -for field campaign standards -. During the first observations, we were glad to see a rather strong Choco-LLJ (~9 m/s). This was a very happy moment after all the preparation and travel.  All of us were carefully following the sounding as it ascended. It was a nice looking sounding, showing several recognizable air layers, such as the wet westerly Choco-LLJ and the relatively drier mid-level easterlies above the Andes. The OTREC-Nuquí team members, other hotel guests, and some locals were fascinated about the art of observing the upper structures of the atmosphere and how it may relate to the copious amounts of rainfall and convection organization that recurrently happens early in the morning right there, right offshore.