Scientists ready to converge on High Plains
By MIKE CORN
There soon could be a massive influx of vehicles sporting high-tech Doppler radar systems, mobile mesonets and a few other pieces of equipment that nearly are unrecognizable and just as difficult to pronounce.
There's also a 12-pound unmanned aerial vehicle from the University of Colorado at Boulder, complete with a 10-foot wingspan. That airplane will be sent up to pass through developing storms to collect valuable data.
Welcome to Vortex2 -- the collaborative Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2.
"If all of the Vortex rolls in, you won't miss us," said Josh Wurman, director of the Center for Severe Weather Research in Boulder, Colo., and the lead scientist in what had been something of an annual foray into the Hays area in search of tornadoes. He is the scientist who was featured in the Discovery Channel series "Storm Chasers."
These people are not part of the annual onslaught of tornado chasers, those adrenaline junkies who seek to track and follow -- photographing and videotaping along the way -- as many tornadoes as possible in a single season. People on the Vortex2 tour will be the scientists who conduct research on how storms form and generally teach meteorologists who scan the skies daily for impending adverse weather.
While Vortex2 won't specifically call anyplace home, its nomadic forces roaming as the storms develop over the Great Plains, it will have three maintenance shops for minor repairs and instrument adjustments. One of those sites will be in Hays.
Wurman, considered one of the leading tornado chasers in the scientific community, brings with him the well-known Doppler on Wheels and his team of tornado researchers.
While CSWR will perhaps have the biggest team in the Vortex2 entourage, his Doppler on Wheels will be one of several similar pieces of equipment.
Wurman and his team will meet up with researchers from universities, the National Weather Service and other organizations from across the United States for a roaming caravan of sorts on the High Plains starting Monday for the second round of an investigation into what makes tornadoes tick.
The idea is to learn more and help improve warnings for areas affected, notable through short-term severe weather forecasts.
Specifically, the group will seek better answers to:
* The genesis of tornadoes: how, when and why they form.
* Why some thunderstorms produce them and others do not.
* The structure of tornadoes, and the relationship of tornadic winds to damage.
* How to better forecast tornadoes.
This is the second Vortex program, the first taking place in the same area -- much of what is known as Tornado Alley -- during 1994 and 1995. The Vortex2 project is scheduled to take place this year and again next year, through a $10 million grant.
More than 120 scientists using about 50 information-gathering vehicles will join together Friday at the University of Oklahoma in Norman for the unveiling of the project, set to begin Sunday, according to David Hosansky, a spokesman for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.
"It's a major undertaking," Wurman said of the sheer number of people and equipment involved.
As a storm develops in the target area, those vehicles and scientists will converge there.
"They'll all stay on the same storm, but they'll scatter around the area," Hosansky said.
The area to be covered includes most of Kansas and Oklahoma and portions of other Tornado Alley states.
"You're pretty much smack-dab in the middle, if not smack-dab, then awful close to it," Hosansky said of the target area.