As thousands of people fled Hurricane Ike last week, OU meteorologists were heading directly to the heart of the storm.

They parked their trucks at the end of a runway in Texas and waited for the storm to pass. They were blasted by hurricane-force winds for two days and ate nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, while a new radar dish gathered a wealth of information.

For Owen Shieh, meteorology graduate student, experiencing Hurricane Ike from an airport tarmac southwest of Houston was more than just thrilling, it was job training.

“Ninety percent of the time I was very excited because it is my career passion, and I understand how hurricanes tick, and felt safe,” Shieh said. “The other 10 percent of the time I was in awe.”

Shieh was a member of an eight-person field team of OU professors and students that left Norman Sept. 9 in radar-equipped vehicles headed for the Texas coast.

The team spent its first night in a deserted Bay City, Texas hotel, Shieh said.

“The hotel staff gave us our keys and said ‘See you later’ and evacuated,” Shieh said. “We had eight rooms for our team and the National Guard had 21 rooms. We literally spent the night with the National Guard.”

Shieh said everybody evacuated the city, which was like a ghost town. “Walmart was closed and that says a lot. It’s something you don’t see with tornadoes,” Shieh said.

Shieh said at one point the rain was so strong that it stung.

“Mother Nature successfully brought me down on my knees,” Shieh said.

The team of OU meteorologists used a dual-polarized X-band mobile radar called NO-XP to gather storm data. This was the first time the radar was used in the field, said Mike Biggerstaff, associate professor of meteorology and director of the Smart Radar program.

“The radar had only been together for a few weeks,” Biggerstaff said. “This was its maiden voyage.”

The radar surveyed continuously for 17 hours and measured winds as high as 85 mph.

“It is really exciting to be in a hurricane with this kind of technology and see what is coming,” Biggerstaff said.

The radar is called dual-polarization because it sends out two different beams, one horizontal and one vertical.

Biggerstaff said the radar has two functions. It measures the shape of raindrops, which improves flood prediction efforts, and measures wind speeds.

The radar’s dual-polarization capabilities allow them to more precisely determine precipitation types and amounts, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration press release.

Biggerstaff said the radar is so precise that his team was able to observe that raindrops in a hurricane vary in shape from those in an ordinary rainstorm.

“We were testing out the technology, seeing what the shape and make up of particles in the hurricane are,” Shieh said.

The radar, which is built by the National Severe Storms Lab, is transported on the back of a truck and can taken nearly anywhere to investigate storms, Shieh said

On top of being highly mobile, the NO-XP radar is capable of giving more precise answers about which parts of the coast will be flooded and allows meteorologists to target an area where evacuation will be necessary.

Aside from hurricanes, the new mobile radar will be used to study thunderstorms, lightning, rainfall and tornadoes, Biggerstaff said.