Doppler on Wheels

Doppler on Wheels (or DOW) is a fleet of X-band and C-band mobile and quickly-deployable truck-borne radars which are the core instrumentation of the Flexible Array of Radars and Mesonets[1] affiliated with the University of Alabama Huntsville[2] and led by Joshua Wurman, with the funding partially provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF), as part of the "Community Instruments and Facilities," (CIF) program.

The DOW fleet and its associated Mobile Mesonets and deployable weather stations (PODs & Polenet) have been used throughout the United States since 1995, as well as occasionally in Europe and Southern America.

[1] The Doppler on Wheels network has deployed itself through hazardous and challenging weather to gather data and information that may be missed by conventional stationary radar systems.

The DOWs, Mobile Mesonets, PODs & POLEs, as well as many other devices were crucial for instrumentation in numerous field projects, including VORTEX, VORTEX2, COPS, MAP, ASCII, IHOP, SCMS, CASES, ROTATE, PAMREX, SNOWD-UNDER, FLATLAND, HERO, UIDOW, UNDEO[citation needed], LEE, PERILS,[5] WINTRE-MIX,[6] RELAMPAGO,[7] GRAINEX,[8] and others.

The DOW fleet, PODS, and Mobile Mesonets have been featured on television, including Discovery Channel's series Storm Chasers (joined by the Tornado Intercept Vehicles and the Dominator SRV vehicles),[11] National Geographic Channel's specials Tornado Intercept and The True Face of Hurricanes, and PBS's Nova episode "The Hunt for the Supertwister," and others.

The COW consists of a C-band dual-polarization dual-frequency radar system utilizing two 1 MW transmitters set to a 5cm wavelength configuration.

The second planned project is the Bistatic Adaptable Radar Network (BARN) which will be integrated with existing DOWs and the COW to provide high resolution wind vector observations without the need for multiple, expensive transmitters.