They are participating in this year's version of the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment, or VORTEX2, and hoping to have more twisters to examine than last year, when they traveled about 10,000 miles over a months time, and the weather yielded only a single tornado to study.

The project starts Saturday and continues through June 15. The goal is to learn more about how, when and why tornadoes form. [ USA Today ]

VORTEX2 is a mobile operation that includes more than 100 scientists, students and others from around the world, using about 40 vehicles, with more than 70 instruments and 10 mobile radars.

The entire operation typically sets up on a single storm.

"The only time we may spread out a little more is in a fast storm motion," said Louis Wicker, with the NOAA National Severe Storms Lab and a VORTEX2 steering committee member.

"We really cant work a storm very well if its moving faster than 30 miles per hour. So if we have storms moving at 40 to 50 mph we may string out along the path."

The VORTEX2 team members may pick an "embryonic cell," or a developing storm, that is about an hour away and wait for it to come to them.

"When the storms moving more than 30 miles per hour, and particularly closer to 40 miles per hour, chasers can individually chase it," he said, "but actually trying to keep the instruments ahead of the game is basically impossible."

Robin Tanamachi, a graduate research assistant at the University of Oklahoma School of Meteorology and a VORTEX2 researcher, said many of the radar instruments take between five and seven minutes to deploy.

So, they have to be able to anticipate where the storm is moving and where the business end of the storm, the hook echo region, is moving.

Project scientists hope to gather the information that will further their understanding of why one thunderstorm produces a tornado and another does not.