The past few days have seenhundreds of tornadoes impact down in the southeastern United States , driven by monolithic storms . We talked about the megastorms with atmospherical scientist Karen Kosiba , whose work is showcased in documentaryTornado Alley .
Kosiba is a researcher at the Center for Severe Weather Research in Colorado , where she study undercoat - level condition during tornadoes . She has also spent the retiring several yearsworking with VORTEX2 , a squad of scientist who accompany these venomous hint storm in truck conform to out with sensor and radar , gathering reams of data on how tornadoes start , and how you could wait them to behave once they do .
She ’s been on the telecasting series Storm Chasers , and in Tornado Alley we see her in the instruction center of one of the roving violent storm chasing research laboratory – a truck that carries its own Doppler radar setup .
io9 : You ’ve been take after tornadoes for years now . Is there something different or strange happening this year that ’s caused so many tornado at once ?
KK : Not really – these things fluctuate yr to twelvemonth . It ’s not part of a pattern . you’re able to feel other long time that this has materialise – there ’s a particularly strong system out of the Pacific , and we ’re get good moisture up there . It just kind of happens . These are tight - move system so our research team is n’t trying to get in front of them and meditate them . Once they get into southeast , there are lots of Tree and rocky terrain that blocks our radar watching . But part of what we ’re seek to learn is how to predict these kinds of storms better .
Is there any way to predict which storms will call on into tornadoes ?
We love that supercell storms are big manufacturer of these tornadoes , but we ca n’t predict whether a particular violent storm will make a crack cocaine .
That ’s the big objective lens of VORTEX2 – a stack of it is fix information from the plain . We ’re trying to visualise out these particular as well as how to relay it to the conditions armed service and the populace . Just because we learn stuff does n’t think it can translate into dear weather prediction . citizenry may not have the experimental tech required to measure whether a storm will create a tornado . Most office have microwave radar , which measures 30 meters up into the air and higher . But what if it flex out that [ for accurate predictions ] you want scurvy level observation , or sounding close to the storm , or temperature and winding speed ? You need other equipment to get those measurements .
We want to know what wind are doing at the ground level , because that ’s where it affects people the most . We ’re trying to correlate radar reading with priming coat level wind speed . So maybe our data , at some percentage point , would give up people to use radio detection and ranging reflection to promise what the winding at the footing will be like .
What ’s the most interesting thing you ’ve let out about tornadoes since you started note them ?
We have data on almost 200 tornadoes – a lot of them are n’t likewise . They have very dissimilar vortices and structures – you could be surprised by a dataset . you’re able to see a great deal of new structure – that ’s the nerveless thing .
If you ’ll allow me to have a scifi moment let ’s talk about something far future : Tornado prevention . What if you were the violent storm stopper rather of the violent storm chasers ? We know raging air and moisure are required to make tornadoes . What would we involve to prevent them ? Imagine you had futuristic technology – whatever you needed . How would you stop a tornado before it starts ?
Well . . . [ laughs ] . You would n’t want your thunderstorm to rotate . You might need to switch the wind direction somehow , though you might get in trouble by make something whole different . Basically the mesocyclone [ the high - point rotating tempest that finally touches down as a twister ] is what you desire to arrest . So you ’d want something airborne that could vary the wind counseling as the conditions form comes through . perhaps something that would deflect the malarky , prevent the gyration . You would n’t want to change the rainfall or anything like that – you postulate the rain . I ’m not sure what this airborne twist would look like , but that ’s what you ’d need to do .
ScienceTornadoes
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