NOAA P-3 Mission Summary Report (EPIC)

ITCZ mission, 8 hrs duration. This was a dual aircraft
mission. The WP3-43 flew the same lawn-mower pattern as 
in previous missions in the box 8-12N 93-97W. We provide a
radar survey of the south-central part of the box to the
C-130. 

We recover data from GPS-dropsondes for all 
grid points.  We also dropped 26 AXCP with 8 failures, 
19 AXCTD with 2 failures, and 3 AXBT with no failures.

The radar was operated in dual frequency mode.
All instruments seemed to work. 

From the scientific point of view,
we observed most of the convection in the north-east part
of the pattern, some convection to the south-east and
suppressed conditions to the western part of the domain. 
Cloud tops where mostly in the 4 to 5 km range, the deepest 
ones we observe where about 10 km deep. Flight level winds
were predominantly north-easterlies; surface winds were mostly  
westerlies. The Western part of the box was more dryer
than the eastern part. In the eastern part we find areas
with no clouds at all but with surface winds strong enough  
to produce plenty of white caps. Most of the convective
lines we saw were East-West aligned.