What are the DOWs (Dopplers on Wheels)?
The DOWs are portable Doppler radars securely mounted on flatbed trucks, and operated in the field by intercept teams from the Doppler on Wheels project. DOWs have measured fine-scale details of tornado features, including eyes and inflow jets, along with wind speeds a short distance above the ground. The strongest wind speed determined from DOW data was about 302 mph — about 30 meters above ground level — in the Bridge Creek/Moore, Oklahoma, tornado of 3 May 1999. [Please keep in mind that radar-indicated winds can’t be compared well to anemometer winds. This is because of the difference in height above ground, and because the radar winds are scanned in the instant of a beam (instead of sampled over several seconds, as with anemometers).
