As Hurricane Sandy moved through the Bahamas (outlined in black) NOAA P-3 missions collected airborne Doppler radar data to use in initializing and evaluating model guidance. Included here you see images of the horizontal winds within the inner core of Sandy sampled from the tail Doppler radar on the P-3 early on 26 October 2012. These images are at three altitudes, 1 km, 3 km, and 6 km, using a composite of winds from four legs from the P-3 oriented north-south, east-west, southwest-northeast, and northwest-southeast. Also plotted on the 1-km altitude analysis are the locations of dropsondes deployed by the P-3 (plotted using standard station symbols). These analyses show that Sandy has a very asymmetric distribution of precipitation at all altitudes shown, with the bulk of the precipitation on the northwest side of the storm likely as a result of the very dry air being advected into the storm from the west and wrapping around to the southeast side of the storm. There is indication of a circulation center at all altitudes shown, with stronger winds northwest of the circulation center almost 75 km from the center. Above 3 -km altitude it also appears as if the circulation center is tilted almost 25 km to the northwest with increasing altitude from 3-km to 6-km, indicative of the strong southerly shear over the storm as it interacts with the trough to the west.
All the Sandy radar composites at 0.5-km height resolution are available at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Storm_pages/sandy2012/radar.html