Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Largest Ever Tornado Study Begins

www.livescience.com/environment/tornado-study-vortex2-100430.html

The largest ever study of tornadoes started the first weekend in May and will continue till June 15th. Over 100 researchers will be involved. The researches hope to surround tornados with mobile radars and other tools to examine in detail how tornadoes form and the patterns of damage they cause. Tornadoes are among the most destructive weather events on Earth and the researches hope to learn more about how they develop so that better warning systems can be implemented. Researchers are going to be using enhanced mobile radars and other new weather-sensing tools to gather data from the zone within supercells where tornadoes develop. They will be looking for fast changes in wind and temperature in this zone. The changes are what can cause a tornado to form within minutes. This happens in only a small number of supercell storms, so they may have to study several storms before they actually get tornado to study.


I have always been fascinated by tornados and hope that this project provides scientist with useful information. Tornados are so dangerous it would be good if better early warning systems could be developed. The article says that not all superscells produce tornados. Hopefully, after the project is complete they will be able to determine which supercells will produce tornados and which will not. Once they are able to make this determination this information could be used to warn people if a dangerous storm in headed there way. Earlier warning would allow people to take cover and secure property resulting in lower loss of life and damage.

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