Center for

Hurricane

Intensity and

Landfall

Investigation

The University of South Alabama Center for Hurricane Intensity and Landfall Investigation (CHILI) was made possible thanks to funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The goal of CHILI is to advance understanding of the physical processes involved in hurricane landfall and to assist NOAA in improving hurricane landfall forecasting. In order to achieve these goals, the center utilizes elaborate data collection facilities as well as a state-of-the-art high performance compute cluster (HPCC). In close collaboration with NOAA´s Environmental Modeling Center (EMC), CHILI will use its collected data to validate and test the Nation´s new operational hurricane model, the H-WRF, to be run on the HPCC. Data is collected via a mesonet of stationary weather stations, as well as intricate sensors observing ocean currents and waves from the bottom of the ocean. These Acoustic Wave and Current Sensors (AWACs) are deployed in the Gulf of Mexico south of Mobile Bay at the beginning of each hurricane season and retrieved when the season ends in collaboration with NOAA´s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML). Mesonet sites are selected in a joint effort with the Mobile Weather Forecast Office (WFO) of the National Weather Service (NWS). These sites continually collect data which are archived and used by the Mobile WFO to assist with their daily forecasts. Several of CHILI´s mesonet sites are located on public school campuses throughout southern Alabama (including 2 sites in Mississippi) in order to foster outreach and to enhance understanding of hurricanes and weather forecasting amongst school children and the general public. Weather station data is also used by schools to enhance their science curriculum. Electrical Cooperatives form another strong partner serving as a reliable host for our mesonet stations. The first four of our mesonet sites were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Award No. ATM-0239492.

CHILI is physically located at the University of South Alabama´s Research and Technology Park in Mobile, Alabama. State of the art computing resources are available for its full-time staff, collaborators, post-doc, and students.

On this website you will find mesonet data and meta-data. You are free to use our data at your own risk and are advised that none of the data on this site has been subjected to any Quality Control measures, but rather is in its raw state as collected from the instruments. Should this data be used in a publication or presentation, acknowledgment is to be given to the funding agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the University of South Alabama Center for Hurricane Intensity and Landfall Investigation (CHILI).