“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 is going on inside a tornado, how exactly are they forming, how strong are the winds right at the surface are -- we need to get up very, very, close.”
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. The high-powered antennas continuously turn in circles. They send out radio waves that hit objects in the air -- like raindrops, and birds. 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.”
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.
“When we get up close to a storm while it’s in the process of making a tornado we can look at the evolution of the winds near the surface, how that relates to the winds aloft, how the precipitation, the rain and the hail influences whether the air is going up or down, whether it’s cold or warm and how that is causing or not causing a tornado to form.”
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25