UAHuntsville, NASA research teams get close view of winter storm

“We are studying the storm’s ‘comma,’ the area of small scale waves or instabilities near the end of a storm system,” said Ryan Wade, a student in UAHuntsville’s atmospheric science Ph.D. program, as he helped set up the radar in New Market. “Those instabilities can dump large amounts of snow over small areas. That’s why you might have a storm that drops four inches of snow across a hundred miles, but eight inches in one place and a dusting in another.

“We are studying the storm’s ‘comma,’ the area of small scale waves or instabilities near the end of a storm system,” said Ryan Wade, a student in UAHuntsville’s atmospheric science Ph.D. program, as he helped set up the radar in New Market. “Those instabilities can dump large amounts of snow over small areas. That’s why you might have a storm that drops four inches of snow across a hundred miles, but eight inches in one place and a dusting in another.