After a few long days at the CSWR hanger in Boulder, CO we are finally on the road. The first week was spent preparing the vehicles for the next five weeks; they needed to be wired, repaired, and outfitted with special equipment so tornado pod deployment teams can safely deploy around a storm. The delay in departing Boulder was because of the radars. DOW 6 and DOW 7 were recently upgraded to dual-frequency dual-polarization radars. This is the first time this has been done on a mobile platform so the implementation was difficult and required extensive testing and modifications.

This year I will be driving DOW 6 with Jacob Carley as my navigator and Justin Walker as the radar operator. The DOW’s are not much different to drive than a regular car; just a little bigger. Hopefully I will get some practice leveling the DOW today.