RAPS-92: The real-time analysis and prediction of storms-1992 program

The Research Applications Program (RAP) at NCAR has been conducting a variety of basic and applied research on meteorological technologies that may improve the safety and efficiency of our nations's air traffic system. The Real-time Analysis and Prediction of Storms-1992 (RAPS-92) field program represented an extension of RAP's ongoing efforts to observe and study the convective weather environment. The basic goals of RAPS-92 were to develop a number of technologies designed to detect and forecast a variety of convective weather phenomena. This included short-term thunderstorm forecasting, advanced remote sensing, real-time numerical modeling, hail detection, and tornado forecasting. A significant goal of the program was to conduct as much of the data acquisition, analysis and display as possible in real-time. This included a number of radar analyses as discussed herein, surface mesonet analysis and real-time acquisition of remote mobile sounding data. A plethora of computer systems were used to integrate and display the raw and analyzed data.