Hurricane observations of particle size and phases and their implications for mesoscale modeling of microphysical processes

The examination of how the size, density and shape of snow and graupel affects their fallout in hurricanes is presented. The development of a model based on a unique data set acquired near the melting layer in hurricanes is described. A self-consistent strategy for representing fall out of hydrometers in mesoscale models is introduced. Differences from mid latitude size distributions are shown to have significant impacts on the fallout of hydrometers due to greater numbers of smaller particles that previously hypothesized.