IMPACTS

A high-flying NASA research plane arrived Wednesday at Hunter Army Airfield to begin a two-month mission of collecting data on East Coast snowstorms. One of NASA’s two Lockheed ER-2 flying laboratories — capable of reaching altitudes of over 68,000 feet — was flown from its base in Palmdale, California to Savannah, touching down at sunset.

Traffic-snarling, routine-ruining snowstorms are a fact of life in the eastern United States, but the region’s snowfall forecasts are notoriously difficult to make. This is partly because scientists don’t know much about what’s going on inside certain narrow ribbons of turbulent storm clouds, called “snow bands,” that can contain some of a storm’s heaviest snowfall rates. Such areas of heavy precipitation can easily turn a carefully made snowfall forecast into a bust and unexpectedly paralyze highly populated regions, depending on their location and movement.

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTGS) — On Tuesday, NASA sent a high-flying plane with a 150 ft wingspan to measure snowstorm activity to the Hunter Army Airfield. NASA's ER-2 arrives at 5 p.m. It will measure the distribution of raindrops, snowflakes, and ice particles vertically in the cloud, as well as how they move. “All this information is important and complementary,” said IMPACTS’ deputy principal investigator John Yorks of NASA Goddard.

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va.- For the first time in 30 years, NASA is revamping how it looks at snow storms. On Tuesday, the agency unveiled its IMPACTS mission--a snowstorm chasing field campaign along the East Coast. NASA will be using two specialized aircraft to investigate each storm: the ER-2 high-altitude aircraft and the NASA P-3 aircraft. The latter will be housed at Wallops Island. "Studying east coast snowstorms is a big forecasting challenge so that was the challenge that was put forth in front of us," says Dr.

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. – NASA scientists are about to embark on a new journey, flying a plane right into the center of a storm to better understand snowfall on the East Coast. “NASA has not done, actually scientists have not done, experiments looking at the details of those storms for 30 years,” says Gail Skofronick-Jackson, a program scientists for NASA’s IMPACTS Mission. Scientists are sharing details about NASA’s new field campaign “Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms”, also known as IMPACTS.