Best of luck and safety to the VORTEX-2 team embarking today on their one month quest for tornado data!
“Verification of Rotation in Tornadoes 2″ or VORTEX 2, was explained to our OMN membership at our May meeting.
Lou Wicker presented the VORTEX-2 strategy and explained how over the last decades, though tornado prediction has improved, we still do not fully understand how tornados are formed.
VORTEX-2 the largest-ever field program to study how tornadoes form and dissipate. VORTEX-2 is set to run from May 10 – June 15 of 2009 and 2010. VORTEX-2 is a NOAA/National Science Fundation (NSF) funded program.
A mobile armada of forty vehicles and portable Doppler radar will be deployed and respond in an area covering North Texas and the Southern High Plains all the way to South Dakota to study tornado genesis, near ground wind fields and relationships between storms.
Tornado warning lead time over the decades has improved.
1980’s – warning time was under 6 minutes, but was improved with employing doppler radar.
1990’s, with the original VORTEX experiment findings, Doppler improvements and training, 7-8 minutes was achieved.
With the 2002-2003 large tornado outbreaks and resulting data,13 minutes warning was realized.
The goal of the VORTEX-2 program is to improve forecasting and push the warning lead time up to 15 minutes.
Best of luck in your efforts to help to protect those living in the areas of these dangerous and awesome weather phenomena.
Keep watching the skies and be safe out there!!