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VORTEX2 scientists are on the chase for tornadoes today in
west Texas. See our slideshow below for images of the gear
they will be using to chase twisters.
Since officially kicking off on Sunday, the weather has been less than cooperative for the VORTEX2 tornado field study teams. From their starting point in Oklahoma, there simply has not been severe weather worthy of them chasing. That is changing right at this moment as the team is on the road and headed to western Texas.
VORTEX2 (Verification of Origin of Rotation in Tornadoes EXperiment2) is nothing short of the most ambitious field study of tornadoes ever launched. Comprising a team of more than 80 scientists utilizing 40 vehicles, 10 mobile radar units and an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) from the United States, Canada, Australia and Finland, the study hopes to answer many of the questions about twisters that we do not have answers to.
How do tornadoes form? What exactly causes the wind to spin into a concentrated funnel? How can we tell exactly when a tornado will form and when it will die, or how long it will last? Why do some thunderstorms produce tornadoes and others do not? What is the structure of tornadoes? What is the relationship of tornadic winds to damage?
- For more on VORTEX2, see our previous article here
- Slideshow: VORTEX2 tornado hunting vehicles and equipment
- Video: Dr. Josh Wurman discusses the VORTEX2 project
Discovering the answers to these will increase our knowledge of tornadoes and most importantly, help to save lives. For the next month, the quest for the answers will take the teams across a large swath of Tornado Alley from South Dakota to Texas and Colorado to Missouri.
Scientists will use four different types of mobile radar units to scan tornadic supercells for possibly activity and record the results. Mobile units will deploy probes, also called “stick nets”, as close to tornadoes as possible to take measurements of windspeed, barometric pressure, temperature and other important data. Other mobile units outfitted with weather stations of their own on the top of their vehicles will encircle storms gathering data from all possible points.
The combination of all of this will provide scientists with the most complete picture ever of tornadoes and the storm systems that generate them. The image at the right shows how the units will be typically deployed during a tornado chase.
Tuesday's chase target
Due to the size of the armada that encompasses VORTEX2, the team is not publishing the particulars of exactly where they are going to be chasing as they want to avoid increased traffic and hazards from curious onlookers. Today however they appear to be targeting a dryline in west Texas, possibly near the Amarillo area.
A dryline is an area where there is a boundary of dry versus moist air, as measured by the dew point. These areas are often where you will find strong thunderstorms – and possibly tornadoes- develop.
The particular area they are chasing today has what I would consider ‘marginal’ chances to spark tornadoes. Hail and wind look to be the biggest danger from the storms that are supposed to pop up in the area later this afternoon. Having said that, weather is if anything unpredictable and tornadoes are a possibility.
Comments
Vortex2, the much anticipated and highly publicized 5-week, 12 million dollar NOAA/University tornado research project, will end tomorrow - with only one modest tornado encounter to show for the large amount of effort and funding that went into this project...
Was it worth it?
Considering the very small number of data sets that have been gathered, I'd have to say no - unlike the annual Hurricane Research Division field program, that is part operational and part research, and acknowledges that some seasons will be more active than others, Vortex2 is a rare event (the first Vortex field program was many years ago, with Vortex3 scheduled for next summer - perhaps, considering Federal budget cutbacks), so, to come up with an almost empty sack must be discouraging for them, to say the least (even though TWC has tried very hard to pump as much excitement into "The Great Tornado Hunt" as possible)...
Again, was it worth the trouble and expense, considering individual teams gather man
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