SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY

Lack of Twisters Aside, VORTEX2 Gets Useful Data

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Meteorologist Patrick Marsh huddles over a computer screen at NOAA's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, anxiously tracking the progress of the armada of researchers taking part in the largest tornado research project in history, known as "VORTEX2."

It is June 10, only three days before the end of the first field campaign in the $10 million research program to investigate how tornadoes form. ... [Marsh] and his colleagues provide situational awareness support for the approximately 100 researchers who are hunting powerful thunderstorms known as "supercells" in the Great Plains region.

The scientific armada is represented on Marsh's screen by multi-colored dots, each of which is slowly ticking west across Kansas to meet up with incipient storms in far southeastern Colorado.