Pressure and buoyancy fields derived from Doppler radar data in a tornadic thunderstorm

A method for retrieval of pressure and bouyancy distributions in deep convection is applied on Doppler radar data collected at two analysis times during the tornadic Del City (Oklahoma) thunderstorm of 20 May 1977. Changes of a previous version of the technique, necessitated by application to real data, include procedures for handling irregularly-bounded volumes and missing data and new assumptions to include reflectivity data and turbulent effects in the equations. Internal consistency checks on the quality of retrieved pressure fields imply that the input data are generally of good quality and point out times and heights within the storm at which greater confidence can be placed in the derived fields.