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-1 <br />. This was <br />height in the cloud. The highest downdraft was recorded at 3.5 km cloud depth at 36.2 ms <br />-1 <br />followed by a strong updraft of 15.7 ms eleven seconds later into the penetration. <br />4.2 Aerosol study: August 23, 2004 <br />Deep southerly flow had become entrenched across south central Texas with very moist low level air in <br />place across the region. Backward trajectories from Houston indicated low-level air originating from the <br />central Gulf of Mexico. The air mass was moderately to highly unstable as the 12Z Lake Charles, <br />Louisiana sounding indicated a CAPE value of 1867 J/kg with only 11.6 J/kg of CIN. During the morning <br />hours, a complex of thunderstorms was located southwest of San Antonio with the anvil spreading across <br />much of the southern Texas coast. On the morning of August 23, the SOAR research aircraft was <br />launched from College Station to investigate CCN and aerosol concentrations within the Houston area. <br />Meteorological conditions in College Station were isolated thunderstorms with a southerly wind, scattered <br />clouds at 1200 feet and broken at 3600 feet. Conditions in Houston were similar with isolated showers <br />north of Houston and cumulus south of Houston. The aircraft flew below cloud base along a west <br />northwest -east southeast grid north of downtown Houston followed by three legs just west of the Houston <br />ship channel (Figure 12). <br />35 <br />