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Largest High-Tech Tornado Chase Set To Begin
coondoggie writes "Next month, with the help of a variety of high-tech gear, researchers will begin a wide-ranging project to better understand the origin, structure and evolution of tornadoes. The National Science Foundation has given $9.1 million to the project called Vortex2 (of course it has a convoluted backronym), which will take place from May 10-June 13. Researchers say Vortex2 is the largest attempt in history to study tornadoes, and will involve more than 50 scientists, 40 research vehicles, and 10 mobile radars, and will cover 900 square miles in southern South Dakota, western Iowa, eastern Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, the Texas panhandle, and western Oklahoma."
Will this be the Dorthy I or the Dorthy II?
If I wasn't a webdev I think I really would have enjoyed being a storm chaser. Here's hoping they get the interceptions they are after and safe travels all season.
The flying cows!
...say they those scientists will suck, other say they are just full of air, and yet, this will spin into awesomeness when we finally get to know what is going on inside a tornado and such. Just please don't tell me they are going to get M. Night to work with them, it would definitely be a twist.
We've got two cows!
GENERATION O98346: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig and remove a random number from the generation. T
What do they evolve into? You can just rock me to sleep tonight!
yelling guy isn't involved, I'll be happy.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
that tornadoes are attracted to mobile homes?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN2_czSBSD0&NR=1
Watch it all the way through. From 2:10 to the end is breathtaking.
Unless the Tornado Intercept Vehicle is part of the team, it's just a bunch of pansies chasing wind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_Intercept_Vehicle
Incoming!! Scientists, incoming!!
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
This is just scientists trying to figure out how to get to the land of Oz.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
to report that it doesn't think it's in Kansas any more?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling
http://www.amazon.com/Heavy-Weather-Bruce-Sterling/dp/055357292X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239131652&sr=8-4
... who read that as a "high-tech tomato chase"?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Over that many states? Not much coverage considering that area is a square only thirty miles on edge. That's smaller than most counties.
The purpose of VORTEX2, as some comments have questioned, is to test some theories about the evolution of tornadoes in thunderstorms and why some supercells produce tornadoes while others do not. In a very simplistic explanation of what's going on, vorticity about a horizontal axis is tilted to where vortex lines intersect the ground, thus tilting the rotation into the vertical and transferring the rotation to the surface. Part of the tilting is done by the rear flank downdraft, and part of the tilting is done by the updraft. However, if the rear flank downdraft is too cold, the updraft cannot lift the air in the downdraft too much, and the rotation isn't tilted into the vertical. Present theories suggest that warmer rear flank downdrafts favor tornadogenesis. Here's a link to a presentation by Dr. Markowski of Penn State about the current theory regarding tornadogenesis. VORTEX2 is an attempt to gather high resolution data sets for many supercells to test the current theory. Obviously there's much more to VORTEX2, including the testing of unmanned aircraft in storm environments. But one major objective is to test the current theory regarding tornadogenesis.
I just hope they don't use it near any pools.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqzlDj0N47g
*slight crashing sound*
Why don't they just study tornados by driving straight into one with an Abrams or Challenger tank? All the armor research has already been done for the storm chasers. Plus you'll probably get thermal imaging as a freebie.
They really know how to spin a story.
Seismometers just seems a cool way of detecting and confirming tornadoes. http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live/contentbe/dispatch/2006/03/28/20060328-C4-00.html
BTW, the Blue Ash tornado they mention actually woke me up. I remember hearing a train-like sound and thinking "I hope that's not a tornado. I don't want to sleep in the bathtub." Turns out the sucker must have been descending as it went over me. Touched down about a mile away, but the path points right back to where I lived.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
why they need high-tech to study tomatoes when anyone can make a passable BLT. Then I read it again. I do need new glasses.
I'm all for subtle instruments delicately probing the deepest tornadic secrets; there is much to be learned. But dammit, I want hardcore tornado pr0n! I want the money shots from INSIDE a big, nasty, mile-wide wedge twister! I want on good video, what Will Keller described when he was caught in one. Thermodynamic and microphysical data are great, but GIVE US THE PR0N!!! :D
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
I think the movie twister had a larger budget than this.
Tornado 101 for those who are curious, since this always comes up if I travel overseas.
1. Are tornadoes really that dangerous?
Yes that can be very dangerous, capable of rendering concrete building to rubble in seconds. They can rip interstate freeways out of the ground and have been recorded of 1.5 km in size (the small fast moving ones are arguably more dangerous). However they tend to very erratic, they can destroy one house, leave the next door house intact and destroy the one after that. By and large they don't kill huge numbers of people, but they do a lot of damage.
2. Why don't people live away from where tornadoes exist?
Because tornado alley is quite large, much bigger in size than the UK, arguably around Germany in size or larger (depending on how you measure tornado alley). Since your chance of encountering a tornado at your home in any given year is pretty small, people tend to view them about like they do the chances of being struck by lightning. Why abandon the midsection of the country on an oddball chance?
3. Are tornadoes all that dangerous?
Nope, most are small in size and many never even touch down. It's a rare tornado that destroys entire towns.
4. Can they occur at night?
Yup, they definitely can occur at night, (I've encountered one at night and it was pretty freaky).
I'm not a meteorologist or anything, I've just lived through a few and know these questions seem to pop up...
. . . I hate to disappoint them. This demonstrates geekdom at its best: doing something dangerous just to get at the bottom of natural phenomena amd understand it. It reminds me of Benjamin Franklin's kite in the thunderstorm.
Welp, these youngen's with their high tech gadgets may chase down a Texas-sized tornado, but they won't be lassoing it up and hauling it back to the ranch.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I certainly hope to run into these fine people on the highway. Too bad they probably are going to stay really far west. I'm equipped with 40 mile radar, satellite weather imagery, and a very fast station wagon it all goes in.
Researchers say Vortex2 is the largest attempt in history to study tornadoes, and will involve more than 50 scientists, 40 research vehicles....
...all of which are Dodge Ram pickup trucks, I presume?
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
A tornado exists because even though hot air rises, hot air at near 100% humidity is heavier than the cold air above it.
People that witness tornadoes say it gets real muggy just before the tornado hits. That is the colder less heavy air above the hot air compressing the hot air.
A tipping point happens and the at 100% humidity, the water is squeezed out and it rains.
Without the water in the air, the hot air now becomes lighter than the cold air above and now have to switch places.
As the now colder heavier air sinks through, the warmer air rises up on the outside.
That is why you always see trash picked up from around the outside.
May set to see the lowest number of weather phenomena in 100 years. Researchers aren't scared.
is arriving late after all the puns have been said.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
until they know enough to make tornados into thrill rides, it's of no interest to me, IMHO.
Design your instrument packages to look like mobile homes and let the tornadoes come to you.
Gotta watch out for the bad guy tornado chasers in the black SUVs.
You're a new luddite? Don't you know how dangerous those are?
Here's a better link to what's going on and what instruments are being used. A media day will be held May 8th at the National Weather Center in Norman, Okla. Interested media will have the opportunity to tour VORTEX2 research vehicles and interview VORTEX2 researchers and teams. I worked for about two years at NSSL. I was never a storm chaser, I just help design and build the instrumentation. It was a real hoot - one of the best jobs I've ever had!
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
I thought it meant vxWorks had joined the stimulus software giveaway. Their development environment and cross-compiler suite is called, "Tornado". Too bad.
As long as this funding gives me a more interesting Storm Chasers Season, then I'm sold.
Although I wish the show would focus a little more on the science rather than which team member this week is pissed off at Dr. Wurman.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
It's going to be interesting when one of my classes is canceled because my teacher has to go storm chasing for VORTEX2. So will people in my class. I'll hopefully be taking in the storm reports.
Per the summary they're going to cover 900 square miles. That's a section 30 miles square... in 7 states? And what are the odds of a tornado in a chunk 30 miles on a side? Or is it just another BS summary by you-know-who...
and all this 'research' will again be lovingly recorded and televised on Discovery HD as porn correctly classified as 'it's interesting when people die'. As a native Western Kansan, I would love to see everyone who makes a tired, flippant Dorothy or Toto remark be bound, gagged, and buried alive with the corpse of L. Frank Baum - another non-Kansan.
Considering that you get a good 1- or 2-A current in tornados, through several million volts, they should also add in that mix that they announce a tornado when they see a large magnetic change near the storm.
Where lightning is an AC speaker system (resulting in thunder -- the cloud surface bouncing up and down), the tornado is a large DC motor.
That also has an effect, because you *can* do something about tornados. At least the smaller ones, you can discharge them.
10kV power lines do a pretty good job of it.
I saw where they turned and stopped a tornado near the Coliseum Mall in Hampton VA, back around '98.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
The name "VORTEX2" stands for "Verification of Rotation in Tornadoes EXperiment 2".
;-)
Now, I may be mistaken, but I am fairly certain that it has been quite solidly verified that tornadoes do, in fact rotate.
... and this is the second time they've spend ~$10 million to figure that out.
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.