Multi‐sensor synthesis of the mesoscale structure of a cold‐air comma cloud system

Abstract A multiscale study of a cold‐air comma cloud that produced an area of heavy rain and locally severe weather has been undertaken by synthesising data from a research microwave Doppler radar and VHF and UHF Doppler wind profilers, along with routinely available radar‐network, satellite, in situ and mesoscale‐model data. The rain area was generated in the exit region of an upper‐level jet characterised by laminated velocity perturbations. Some of the perturbations were attributable to inertia‐gravity wave activity. The rain area itself is shown to have been composed of a well‐organised set of mesoscale rainbands each being due to a mixture of upright and slantwise convection. The existence of the multiple rainbands may have been related to the multi‐layered atmospheric structure upwind. Each of the rainbands had cold‐frontal and warm‐frontal portions, so as to form a series of mini warm sectors stacked along the axis of the comma cloud at roughly 70 km intervals. The multiple rainbands were accompanied by multiple fingers of overrunning low‐θw air from part of a dry intrusion originating from just below a major tropopause fold. The fold contained an intense potential‐vorticity maximum which appeared to be the focus of the overall system. The operational mesoscale version of the Met. Office's Unified Model, with its 12 km grid, is shown to have resolved many but not all of the key features of the rainbands. It is suggested that further improvements in very‐short‐range forecasting of important local detail could be achieved by further increasing its resolution and assimilating more mesoscale observational data. Copyright © 2002 Royal Meteorological Society