Laserfiche WebLink
<br />i <br />j <br />, . <br />fW <br /> <br />water equivalent, during relatively warm midday periods. This problem is suspected to be caused by <br />inadequate compensation of the load cell's temperature dependence. Otherwise, the gauge compared very <br />well with a nearby calibrated Belfort weighing gauge. If one ignores the hours when the ETI gauge <br />indicated precipitation but the Belfort did not, the total accumulation by the two gauges was very,similar. <br />The two gauges rarely differed in hourly precipitation amount by more than 0.015 in. <br /> <br />~ <br />t <br />H <br />n <br />l <br />~ <br />~ <br />I <br />I <br /> <br />Agreement between the two gauges was better than between either gauge and a nearby snowbird. <br />Although the snowboard observations were highly correlated with both gauges, the snowboard received <br />from 6 to 9 pct more snowfall than the gauges over the test period. Part of this difference may have been <br />caused by gauge undercatch, although wind speeds were very limited during snowfall in the protected test <br />clearing. It is speculated that part of the difference may have been caused by downhill drifting of snow <br />onto the snowboard between some storms. <br /> <br />The observations indicated that either the ETI or Belfort gauge can provide accurate precipitation <br />measurements when protected from significant wind. The ETI gauge has the advantages of requiring <br />infrequent servicing and providing digital, computer-compatible data without laborious manual chart <br />reading. <br /> <br />8.8. Super, A. B., andA. W. Huggins, 1993: Relationships between storm total supercooled liquid <br />water flux and precipitation on four mountain barriers. J. Weather Modification;25, 82-92. <br /> <br />ABSTRACT <br /> <br />There is a commonly held view that large winter orographic storms tend to be efficient in converting <br />supercooled liquid water to snowfall while small storms tend to be inefficient and therefore, are more <br />susceptible to cloud seeding. To test this conceptual picture, supercooled liquid water flux and <br />precipitation amounts were compared for 4 different mountain regions in Arizona, Colorado and Utah. <br />Supercooled liquid water flux totals were estimated for entire storm periods from vertically-integrated <br />microwave radiometer measurements and wind speeds within about 1 km of the mountain crest, <br />corresponding to the layer expected to contain most of the supercooled liquid water. Per storm <br />precipitation totals were measured near the radiometer sites. <br /> <br />Comparison of storm total supercooled liquid water flux with total precipitation revealed apparent <br />significant relationships between the two variables at all sites. The larger supercooled liquid water flux- <br />producing storms tended to have larger precipitation amounts. When the effect of storm duration was <br />removed, partial correlations coefficients between supercooled liquid water flux and precipitation were <br />significant at 3 of the mountain sites. None of the data sets supported the concept that large precipitation- <br />producing storms are highly efficient in converting supercooled liquid water flux to snowfall. This <br />suggests that large storms are efficient during some phases when abundant snowfall is produced, but <br />inefficient during other phases when supercooled liquid water flux is abundant. This hypothesis was <br />tested for one well-observed storm. Precipitation efficiency was estimated throughout the storm's <br />duration'by comparing snowfall with upwind supercooled liquid water flux plus ice flUx. The prefrontal <br />phase was very inefficient and produced most of the total supercooled liquid water flux. The frontal phase <br />was more efficient and about half the flux of liquid and ice was converted to snowfall. The postfrontal <br />phase had little supercooled liquid water flux but significant ice flux. However, it was inefficient in <br />converting cloud ice to snow on the ground. <br /> <br />47 <br /> <br />