NOAA P-3 Mission Summary Report (EPIC)

Eight hrs - ITCZ mission, WP3 flew the usual lawn-mower pattern 
in the box 8-12 N 93-97 W. We deployed 27 AXCP (1 fail), 
20 AXCTD (5 fail), and 15 GPS-dropsondes (1 fail).
GPS sondes were dropped only at every degree at 93W and  
at 12, 10, and 8 North in the rest of the N-S legs of 
the pattern.  

The Doppler velocities were uncorrelated most of the time
after 1839 UTC. (The operator ran a test using single 
frequency mode from 1843 to 1849 UTC. No conclusive results
were obtained. We proceed with the original setting but
the Doppler velocities continued to be uncorrelated for 
most of the time.) The rest of the instruments seemed to 
work well.

Surface winds were very light, typically between 2 and 4
m/s, they shift from north-easterlies to south-westerlies
between 10 and 8 North. Flight level winds were primarily 
easterlies (10 to 15 m/s).  
We observed very little convective activity in the study 
region: a N-S convective line around 93W,12N and an E-W line
around 96W,8.8N. We also observe widespread zones of 
stratiform clouds (about 10km height) toward the south of the
pattern, and stratiform clouds (about 2km  height) toward the 
North-West part of the pattern. We flew through some non-precipitating 
cumulus that were growing on top of this low layer of clouds. They
were quite vigorous: we observe vertical velocities up to 10 m/s.