THE 1995-ARIZONA-PROGRAM - TOWARD A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF WINTER STORM PRECIPITATION DEVELOPMENT IN MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN

The 1995 Arizona Program was a field experiment aimed at advancing the understanding of winter storm development in a mountainous region of central Arizona. From 15 January through 15 March 1995, a wide variety of instrumentation was operated in and around the Verde Valley southw est of Flagstaff, Arizona. These instruments included two Doppler dual -polarization radars, an instrumented airplane, a lidar, microwave and infrared radiometers, an acoustic sounder, and other surface-based fa cilities. Twenty-nine scientists from eight institutions took part in the program. Of special interest was the interaction of topographicall y induced, storm-embedded gravity waves with ambient upslope flow. It is hypothesized that these waves serve to augment the upslope-forced p recipitation that falls on the mountain ridges. A major thrust of the program was to compare the observations of these winter storms to thos e predicted with the Clark-NCAR 3D, nonhydrostatic numerical model.