I spent my first full day in the Maldives at the S-Polka radar site located about a 15 minute drive from our hotel near the airport। As Daehyun discussed above, S-Polka is an impressive radar! The day was uniformly gray with light to moderate “stratiform” precipitation and no sun, which we monitored all day on the S-Polka. The word on the street is that this may have been associated with the enhanced precipitation phase of a “convectively coupled equatorial Kelvin wave,” an atmospheric wave trapped near the equator that moves eastward, but at a faster speed than the MJO.
The working area of the S-Polka site consists of a series of equipped trailers where direct data feeds from not only the S-Polka, but other sites including the SMART-R radar can be accessed. Here is a shot of the crew in Container 9 today, including (front to back) Daehyun, John, Courtney, and Paquita. I was working to the left of Daehyun. Notice the dour looks because of the weather.
The S-Pol site even has a deluxe “throne” (Container 10), which is one of the nicer outhouses you will ever experience।
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