|
Welcome to Armageddon Online - Disaster News, Future Scenarios, Preparedness and Survival |
|
|
|
|
|
Largest ever tornado study ends |
|
The News -
Natural Disasters
|
|
July 21, 2010 |
|
Storm-chasing scientists have wrapped up the most dangerous stage of the largest-ever study on why some storms become tornadoes and others don't. While their mission didn't produce any "Aha!" moments, the storm hunters were able to study more than 20 tornadoes and gather more information on these storms than ever before, said team member Joshua Wurman of the Center for Severe Weather Research in Boulder, Colo. The findings are leading to a greater understanding of tornadoes, and scientists expect they will ultimately improve tornado warnings and short-term severe weather forecast.
( See the storm chasers at work). Wurman, who has been collecting data on tornadoes for over a decade and has been featured in the television series "Storm Chasers," called the project a "tremendous success" and said he has "high confidence that we will get good results" from combing though the data. This analysis will take several years to complete, he said. Their $11.9 million project is called VORTEX2. The first VORTEX project (for "Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment") was conducted in 1994 and 1995. It gathered critical data on supercells, the severe and long-lived thunderstorms that give birth to the most destructive and deadly tornadoes. VORTEX findings were credited with improving National Weather Service tornado warnings. In VORTEX2, scientists studied the swirling storms across the Great Plains with a flotilla of instruments. The mission ran from May 1 to June 15, the most active part of the tornado season in the Great Plains. Here, violent twisters are more common than any other place in the world and residents are constantly on the lookout for ominous clouds. "We're studying something that's not just an academic curiosity. It will help people that live in fear of tornadoes," Wurman said. Full Story : MSNBC |
|
