Scientist Joshua Wurman was the first to put Doppler radar equipment on a vehicle and drive it into the path of a tornado.

“I invented the Doppler on Wheels back in the 1990s because I was frustrated that we couldn’t see enough detail inside tornados and hurricanes. We had blurry images of all these things, and in order to really understand the physics -- the math of what’s going on inside a tornado, how exactly are they forming, how strong are the winds right at the surface -- we need to get up very, very, close.”

Doppler on Wheels 7 samples a severe thunderstorm in western Nebraska. (Photo by Tim Marshall, 2010)

Mr. Wurman heads the Center for Severe Weather Research in Boulder, a city in the western state of Colorado. He has put his Doppler radar equipment on large trucks. Mr. Wurman and his colleagues sit inside the truck and study the computer images formed by the signals that return.

“I’m seeing it through the computers and through the radar screens, which are making three-dimensional images of the wind and the debris and the rain and hail flowing around the storm.”

Cloud to ground lightning strikes near storm chasers during a tornadic thunderstorm in Cushing May 31, 2013.

Using information from satellites, stationary radar networks, and computer models, the team finds a storm that could become a tornado and drives the truck right into that area. Doppler on Wheels has been close to over 200 tornados so far.