In the Thick of Things

Some of you may have heard the news about the ten or so devastating tornadoes that hit the Oklahoma City area yesterday. The Vortex 2 team and The Weather Channel group that is embedded with them, were in the midst of the storms. Adam did not actually see the tornado that was documented by TWC because he was busy doing scouting work for some radar trucks at the time. He did witness plenty of damage in the aftermath of the storms, though, and the last I heard his hotel was without electricity.

Many of the Vortex 2 members live in this region because the main headquarters of the National Weather Service is on the grounds of the University of Oklahoma in Norman. I'm sure that lots of these people were concerned about their own families and houses during the outbreak. The Vortex 2 team was very saddened that the tornadoes hit in a populated area, but they certainly have no control over that. Their goal is to ultimately increase warning times and provide information to engineers that will allow them to improve the structural integrity of buildings in order to save lives. Hopefully they will encounter some more storms in the coming weeks that occur in wide, open fields. That way they will be able to get better readings from their instruments, there will be much less property damage, and, most importantly, no one will get hurt.

Mike Bettes from TWC explained tornado chasing with this analogy. An oncologist does not want anyone to get cancer, but people do, so they study the awful disease. A meteorologist does not want tornadoes to develop, but they do, so the destructive storms are studied. Adam's research in grad school will focus on severe storms.

Adam and the University of Michigan group is working on a blog about their Vortex 2 experiences. I will post the link as soon as Adam sends it to me.