the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Nineteen months of daily weather logging on the U.S. east coast: The WFIP3 event log
Abstract. The Third Wind Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP3) is a multi-institutional field campaign designed to advance the understanding and prediction of the offshore atmospheric boundary layer along the U.S. east coast. Extending from February 2024 through August 2025, WFIP3 combines long-term coastal and offshore measurements with targeted modeling and forecasting efforts. This data paper presents the WFIP3 event log, a curated record of 578 days of meteorological phenomena and field observations that complements the campaign's extensive high-frequency datasets. The event log provides both manually documented daily weather discussions and automatically derived indicators of atmospheric processes—including low-level jets, wind ramps, extreme wind veer, and weak wind conditions—based on observations from scanning lidars deployed at three coastal and offshore sites. The dataset offers structured metadata, standardized time and site identifiers, and consistent terminology to facilitate its integration with WFIP3's observational and modeling data products. The log supports diverse applications, from model evaluation and forecast verification to the selection of case studies on offshore boundary-layer dynamics. The WFIP3 event log is publicly available through the U.S. Department of Energy's Wind Data Hub, providing the research community with a transparent and enduring contextual reference for the interpretation and use of WFIP3 measurements.
Competing interests: At least one of the (co-)authors is a member of the editorial board of Wind Energy Science.
Publisher's note: Copernicus Publications remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims made in the text, published maps, institutional affiliations, or any other geographical representation in this paper. While Copernicus Publications makes every effort to include appropriate place names, the final responsibility lies with the authors. Views expressed in the text are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.- Preprint
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Status: open (until 11 Mar 2026)
- RC1: 'Comment on wes-2026-17', Anonymous Referee #1, 20 Feb 2026 reply
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RC2: 'Comment on wes-2026-17', Anonymous Referee #2, 23 Feb 2026
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The paper is an excellent summary of the daily event log captured during the WFIP3 project. The WFIP3 field campaign is an impressive collection of both atmospheric and oceanographic measurements taken as part of a state of the art investigation of the air-sea interactions and mesoscale phenomenon in the offshore waters off of Southern New England. The identification of important meteorological and oceanographic features and the ability of NWP models to accurately predict these features will lead to model improvements that will improve public forecasts for millions of people, as well as allowing for the more smooth integration of the proposed multiple GWs of offshore wind capacity in the region to the grid.
The text is well organized, provides an adequate description of the purpose of the daily log and methodology employed and criteria used to determine days of interest. Researchers and wind energy professionals will find these logs to be an excellent starting point when investigating the different datasets available and when for identifying periods requiring additional attention. All technical items of the paper look to be in order and well documented.
While not required, the paper could be significantly improved for the reader with some additional examples, perhaps some statistics regarding phenomena which were concurrent? Additional information from the remaining measurements and oceanographic measurements would have been ideal, but I am left to assume that this omission has to do with external factors which have unfortunately closed off public access to the data. There are a few minor suggestions regarding some improvements which could be made for future analysis that would be of added value to the offshore wind community, namely a deeper investigation of very low level jets which can occur at lower altitudes than are being used in the analysis and an increased cut-out wind speed which is more relevant for Offshore US wind projects.
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The data paper Nineteen months of daily weather logging on the U.S. east coast: The WFIP3 event log is an indispensable and important resource to support a very relevant and novel dataset from the WFIP3 field campaign. The WFIP3 field campaign yielded long-term coastal and offshore measurements aimed at advancing the scientific understanding and forecasting of the offshore atmospheric boundary layer. Given its exceptional relevance, the unique dataset of WFIP3 will be used by researchers interested in the atmospheric conditions in the atmospheric boundary layer on the US East Coast; This data paper and the event log will be a first read for those using the data.
The paper is very well written (I couldn’t find any typos or mistakes), very well structured, and includes the necessary information, references, and links.
Here are a few questions and comments that might improve the data paper: