Arizona 1995

The Arizona Program is a multi-agency study of winter orographic storms in a mountainous region of central Arizona. It is motivated by numerical model simulations that predict the occurrence of a persistent and large-scale, mountain-induced wave cloud over the Verde Valley. The model predicts updrafts and liquid water production over the valley that are unusually large for winter storms and which may be ideal for cloud seeding to increase snowpack on Arizona's Mogollion Rim. To verify the model predictions, a field project involving aircraft and several remote sensors was conducted in the area from January to March 1995. ETL's collected data with its NOAA/K and NOAA/C radars and its steerable microwave radiometer . These remote sensors confirmed the existence of very strong orographic waves in the airflow over the valley and provided detailed information on flood-producing rainstorms that accompanied them.