The final weeks of the MC3E campaign usher in a new set of scientists to direct cloud and precipitation missions over Oklahoma into early June. As he has done for the entire campaign, Jan Nystrom (Aircraft Coordination Experts) remains on the airwaves and directing the two MC3E campaign aircraft—The University of North Dakota Citation II and the NASA ER-2—towards the weather and cloud systems of interest. However, a new crop of researchers has descended on the SGP Central Facility, led by lead mission scientists Steve Nesbitt of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Pavlos Kollias of McGill University. Both are well versed in satellite, ground-based radar, and several other vital campaign platforms.

The start of Steve and Pavlos’ term in the “hot seat” could not have gone much better. The two young mission scientists positioned those MC3E aircraft for “Dream Scenario”-type events on May 23 and 24 for several solid hours of data collection through deep convective storms. On May 23, strong convective storms near Ponca City included one tornadic supercell, well captured by the ARM C-SAPR and X-SAPR radar systems (as well as some phenomenal mammatus clouds, as in the accompanying picture). The following day, the SGP Central Facility was under a NOAA Storm Prediction Center “High Risk” warning for much of the day and saw some active weather, but fortunately none of the most intense supercells passed directly over the facility. We look forward to a similar set of exciting events as we close out the rest of the campaign.