IFEX daily log
Monday, July 4, 2005
Arrived in San Jose on 7/3. Went to hangar at 9AM on 7/4 to participate in
coordination meeting with Robbie, Jeff, Ed, Gerry, and Mike. After discussion, we
decided the best plan was to plan a test-coordination mission with the ER-2. We would
target a line of showers that normally form off the west coast of Costa Rica when there is
easterly flow. We would fly a shortened diamond pattern and a portion of the
microphysics module (from 10,000-14,000 ft).
The meteorological situation showed TS Dora south of Acapulco, near the coast.
It was expected to parallel the coast just offshore, and not be a target. Strong (20-30 kt)
northeasterly shear was southeast of Dora, extending from the Yucatan southwest across
central America into the E Pac. There was a blowup of convection over Panama, but that
was not associated with any wave and no genesis was anticipated. So no genesis targets
in the region. There was convection over the windward islands with impressive upper-
level outflow, but it was forecast to move into the SE Caribbean Sea, an unfavorable
location for development climatologically. Tropical Depression #3 was just pulling N off
the Yucatan peninsula, and there was a potential for a tasking of 42 into this system, even
though the system looked like it was being sheared from the southwest and did not look
likely to intensify much. N42RF was tasked for a SFMR/fix mission the following day,
takeoff at 1330 UTC takeoff. It would then either return to San Jose or recover in Key
West and return to San Jose the following day, so we planned to fly the coordination test
flight with N43RF and the ER-2 on Tuesday. The anticipation was that the wave in the
eastern Caribbean might provide a target by Thursday or Friday.
Rob Rogers
HRD Field Program director
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