TechStuff Classic: How Storm Chasers Work

how storm chasers work. This episode originally published on July twenty two, two thousand thirteen, and we've been getting a lot of storms here in Georgia, so it seems pretty a proposed that we go back and revisit this, So let's listen in. This is our warning, which we will be repeating at the end of the episode. Storm chasing is seriously dangerous business. This is not a hobbyist thing, um,

though some people treated that way. It is you are putting yourself at serious risk when you are encountering major storm fronts, including but not limited to tornadoes. So we want to get all the way and um, the people who go about storm chasing our professionals. They are researchers, they have been trained, um and and they do serious work. It's it's not just all about the thrill. I'm sure that part of it for these people is a thrill.

But but but the number of tornadoes in the United States has increased since the nineteen sixties, but the number of deaths in the US has declined due to these brave people's work. Right, we're learning more about these systems and how to predict them. Now, granted, prediction is about all we can do because these are major storm systems that we don't understand so much energy, and the energy and these storm systems rivals that of a nuclear bomb.

They can they can reach above three miles an hour. Yeah, this is this is serious business. So let's talk a little bit about what storm chasers are and what they do. So they do tend to fall into three major categories. You've at your scientific researchers, which I would say are probably the majority of well until recently, anyway, we're the

majority of storm chasers. These are the men and women who dedicate their their lives to studying storm systems, gathering data, and trying to learn everything we can about them so that our forecast models get more and more precise, so that we can increase the levels of safety not just of where we build things, but how we build them and how to get people in out of harm's way.

So that's one group. Another group are professionals who are trying to capture video or still images of storms and then sell them to either a news outlet or a magazine or television show, or just to any other type of customer. So they're trying to turn storm chasing into profit. And then your third category are your thrill seekers, who are treating it like a hobby. They want they want to witness the awesome power of a storm, which can

be really amazing to behold, but it is so dangerous. Yeah, I would say that really technically most storm chasers fall into all three categories in some way, shape or form. I mean, you know, it's it's it's that's true. It's not like it is a business. And most of them do take footage while they're in the most of them are also doing research and are probably excited about. Right, You've got you've got some hobbyists who are just trying

to see a really cool storm. And you've got some companies that are operating tourism where it's actually they're creating a business where they're taking people out on tours to try and see one of these storms. Uh So there, it's not necessarily that you you only belong to one category. You might span multiple categories, but that's generally how folks

kind of classify them. Uh Now, really, when it comes down to what we need to talk about, what is an actual tornado, because that's mainly what storm chasers are concerned with. They also will take a look into huge thunderstorm systems, super cells, things like that. Uh. Also, some storm chasers will have some experience with things like hurricanes,

which are different from tornadoes. Yeah, it is. It is kind of um implied that hurricane chasers are not really storm chasers because you're not so much chasing a hurricane you know where it is. Yeah, it's pretty obvious. Yeah, hurricanes are very different from tornadoes. Tornadoes are, Like we said, they are pretty mysterious. We don't understand fully how they form, what it is that's making them form, or why they form in once circumstances. But in another set that seems identical,

they don't. So that means there's there's probably some other factors there that we just aren't really completely aware of. Uh that creates some randomness in this event which would cause them to form in one case and not another. So I guess we need to kind of define what a tornado is. Okay, well, so it's a it's a swirling, massive air um It is spawned from a areas of severe thunderstorms called super cells, which are storm clouds that

can reach like six miles up into the atmosphere. These are tall, tall cloud systems, and it has enough energy to create a cyclone, a spinning air right now, if we want to go into an even more in depth definition, the Glossary of Meteorology says that it's a violently rotating column of air pendant from a cumuli form cloud or underneath a cumuli form cloud, and often but not always

visible as a funnel cloud. So literally, in order for a vortex to be classified as a tornado, it must actually be in contact with the ground and otherwise otherwise it is just a funnel right, yeah, So it has to be in contact with the ground, has to be from the ground all the way up to the cloud base.

If it's not all the way up to the cloud base, it could be what is called a gust nado or you know some people call them like you know, even little dust storms you'll see like a little twisting motion. Those are not actually tornadoes unless they extend all the way up to the cloud base. So it has to be from the cloud base to the ground for it to actually be a tornado. Now, usually within a tornado you've got wind sheer going on. That's that's winds at

different altitudes that are blowing in different directions. Um, that that end up, you know, creating this rotation. Yeah, and the rotation in the northern hemisphere tends to be counterclockwise and in the southern hemisphere it tends to be clockwise. But that's not a hard and fast rule. You can actually have the same way that that you can technically in the northern hemisphere. See water go down the drain. Yeah. Yeah.

The core Lanus effect is one of those things that a lot of people will cite when it comes to this sort of stuff that really applies to huge bodies, not tiny ones. But in this relatively tiny ones, I should say. But in this case, you can actually find storm systems that have both counter clockwise and clockwise moving tornadoes within one system. So it's not like a in fast rule, it's just more of a tendency. So. Um,

there's also this thing called a messo cyclone. All right, this is a a twisting vortex of air that goes through a cloud system. But imagine that it's horizontal, all right, So it doesn't it's not it's not vertical yet. It's so it's a messo cyclone. It's kind of like what a tornado would look like if you put it on its side up in the clouds, all right, and then you get these these wind sheer uh factors, these these sharp moving horizontal winds that can telt the messo cyclone

so that it is upright. And if it does in fact go upright and the base of it touches the ground, that's when you get your tornado. And like I said, you can have a very similar set of circumstances that in one case spawn a tornado and then another do not. Right right, Um, what what helps with the tornado is when you get these inflow bands, which are which are ragged bands of cumulance clouds that that um extend out away, usually to the south or southeast here in the northern hemisphere.

Um and uh. It suggests that the storm is is gathering low level air from several miles away and and sucking in that that hot moist air that is going to be fueling the storm. Right now, I've heard another term when it comes to tornadoes, and I wonder if you actually know anything about it, because it intrigues me, it tasks me. And this is the term beaver tail. A beaver's tail, Am I am? I crazy? Or is

that associated with tornadoes? Now? This is a thing. It's it's a smooth, flat cloud band that that extends again in the northern hemisphere from the from the eastern edge of the storm going out to the east or southeast or eastern northeast. I'm sorry, um, and uh it It also just suggests the presence of rotation. Got you. Yeah, So, so in the storm systems, you have areas where there is precipitation and you have areas where there's no precipitation.

I think the beaver's tail is in the no precipitation area. So it's kind of one of the borders of these storm systems. So if you see a storm system that has several of these indicators, that's one of those those warning signs to say this is the sort of situation in which tornadoes can form. Right, all of these situations can happen in completely benign, regular old thunderstorms, that nearly

terrify your dog. And uh, wall cloud is another one that said, that's a cloud that seems like it's descending from the bottom of the storm. Um, and those are actually one of the more present that that's like your ten to twenty minute warning if a tornado is going to form. There, you've got about ten to twenty minutes from when that's when that Yeah, that's that's scary stuff. And so when this tornado is forming, you get an updraft, all right, and that up dress sars to pull in

low level air from several miles around. I mean, we're talking a huge system here, and that low level air is pulled up through the updraft from the rain area, and the rain cooled air is incredibly humid, like you were saying, the moisture in the rain cool air quickly condenses, and uh, that's why you get that wall cloud. And then you know you know that they're the conditions are

ripe for a tornado to form. And then you've got the rear flank down draft or RFD, and that's that's this downward rush of air from from the back end of the storm. That's a that's descending along with the funnel Wow. Yeah, so this this looks like it's a bright spot, right, that's what that's what this usually looks like. It's usually to the rear, and in the northern hemisphere it's the southwest side, which I think actually leads to

a wives tale. There's an old wives tale that if you were to if a tornado is approaching and you have a basement, you should go and huddle in the southwest corner, the idea being that that would be the safest way from the path of the tornado. But as it turns out, tornado pathways are not nearly so predictable. They are very unpredictable in fact. And um and and also that that clear spot just doesn't have rain in it,

it's still actually a space of extreme wind activity. And so yeah, then you've got the funnel itself, um and which the visibility of a tornado will often depend upon how much material is in it. Sometimes if usually if it's if it's a little bit of material, that's when it's it's most visible. That's when you can really see the definition of the funnel cloud. If it's hits some dust or something, right, right, if it's got some debris

in there, when it's got a lot. It makes it hard to see because it just it looks like a massive darkness coming at you. By the way, we'll probably have some personal stories that we can relate a little bit because Lauren and I have both experienced being through tornadoes. Um, you know, I I grew up in Northeast Georgia and I grew up in Ohio, and both areas have have been the site of tornado activity. Granted, not nearly at

least in Northeast Georgia. It's not nearly to the same extent as places in the Midwest that are in what is called tornado Alley, but we still get quite a few. Yeah, speaking of tornado Alley, the United States has, or North America in general, has has the most tornadoes of any place on the planet, about about twelve hundred per year UM.

And this is because of of what's called a dry line, which is a center of cool, dry air that is coming off of the deserts to the west and meeting up with the warm, wet air from the oceans of the east and causing all kinds of havoc right right, So, you know, a lot of people will say that tornadoes are kind of the result of cold Canadian air mixing

with the warm, moist air of the Caribbean. And then the party gets together and the snowbirds come down and the crazy steel drums come up, and then we have a big old party in the form of tornado. And any storm institute will tell you that's really simplification. That's not really that thing. Tornadoes do occur in other parts of the world. Absolutely, you find them in pretty much everywhere. It's just that the frequency is much greater in the

United States. Sure, after the US, North America, I should say, yes, after the US, Argentina and Bangladesh have the next two highest proportions of tornadoes in per year. But but yeah, they happen everywhere, right, So a lot of the conversation we're going to have is again, and this comes as a surprise to nobody who's been listening to tech stuff for a long time, going to be very US centric. But that kind of makes sense because North America does

play home to tornadoes. Get a pass in this particular instance. Trusts us if you if you live in a place that is very, very infrequently hit by tornadoes, just listen and enjoy as we discuss the terrifying experience that we have gone through as tornadoes have uh you know, rereaked havoc in our homeland. Um. In fact, we can go

ahead and say this, we live in Atlanta right now. Um. And Atlanta a few years ago was hit by some by by a pretty massive tornado that did some major damage in downtown went right through downtown Atlanta, which is unusual. You don't frequently have tornadoes passed through metropolitan areas. And in fact, there were some theories for a while that the the island effect, the heat island effective of cities

might have something to do with tornado formation. But it may just be that's the odds, you know, just one of those things where it's kind of pretty small. Yeah, when you when you when you're talking about the grand scheme of things in the city is a tiny target and when you talk about the entire United States. Um, but yeah, one went through downtown Atlanta and there for

for months. There were major buildings in Atlanta that had temporary covers over a lot of windows, like high rise building, skyscraper buildings had these these temporary covers on their windows because they had to start replacing all of them, some of which are and buildings that have very um specific types of surfaces, Like we have one hotel in downtown Atlanta that's essentially a cylinders. It's beautiful, but it does

mean that replacing the glass is somewhat difficult. And there were entire neighborhoods east of downtown that were just laid to waste, including some lofts that had just been built. They had been converted from old warehouses and old manufacturing plants. Yeah, and they had just been converted into the hill offs and then destroyed. Um that's all been rebuilt now, but

you know, it can hit major cities. We wanted to talk a bit about the history of storm chasing and just that I've got some about the history of weather forecasting in general, just to kind of get an idea of how we've come to the point where we're at now. Now, Lauren, the very first date I have is eight forty nine. Do you have anything before that? What? Yes? That was the first first or corded account of a tornado. It was sure as windy, elt there goes Johnny. It's the

village of Rosdala, Ireland. Um, sure as windy, there goes all Shaughnessy and the the the account said that it looked like a steeple of fire. Wow, that's poetic. We usually say that there's a tornado's coming at us right now. You hear that train of coming coming around the band? Um, so four, do you have anything else before the smarty pants? So in Professor Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian established a

network of weather instruments along telegraph companies. So he partnered with telegraph companies and helped install these weather instruments at their offices in various places around the United States. Uh. And he used maps to coordinate between these these different telegraph companies, and so the observations they sent back he would end up note making notes on the map, and then from that he would start to create weather predictions.

So that's some of the first weather forecasting in the United States, beyond just the my knee is aching, it's going to rain soon, or my dog is freaking out. That's so he starts doing this. But there was a little event in the United States that kind of disrupted the whole project. That was called the Civil War. Yeah. Yeah, that kind of ended up taking over the telegraph lines

for a while or mysterious reasons in eighteen sixty five. However, after the conclusion of the Civil War, Professor Henry then suggested that all meteorological observations reorganized under a single agency as a means of predicting storms and warning coastal shipping. So this was the very beginning of developing a national bureau to oversee this and study it and make forecasts.

So eighteen seventy was when the United States formed the Weather Bureau, and that's a year Congress established a National Weather Warning Service under the Secretary of War. Now this is going to get interesting because this particular office ended up playing hop scotch with the various departments of government. It started off under the Secretary of War mainly because the military had the most advanced censors will not really even censors at this point, but just communication lines. So

the military was put in charge of this. And also it was a matter of national security in many cases, so the Secretary of War oversaw this Weather Bureau department, and the Army Signal Corps assumed responsibility for taking observations at military installations and warning people of storms. Uh. About twenty years later, in eight nine, the Weather Service Organic Act transferred the Weather Reporting Services from the Secretary of War to the Department of Agriculture. Would not be the

last time that it would jump ship. Meanwhile, in eighteen seventy four, there's a report of John Mere crazy person, climbing the top of a hundred foot hauled Douglas spruce during a fierce windstorm and writing extensively about how really cool it was. Storm chaser, storm chaser, early storm chaser. Also in um in eighteen eighty four that August is the first known photograph of a tornado taken UM, specifically

in South Dakota. Yeah, not from the inside. No. In eighteen nineties six, that was when the first hurricane warning service was established in the United States, And in nineteen o nine, the Weather Bureau began a regular program of balloon upper air observation. So this is sort of the beginning of weather balloons. There had been some work with it earlier, but this was the first time that the Bureau itself had started to fund a weather balloon program.

And weather balloons are pretty much what they sound like. They are balloons that carry some form of sensor, whether it's just something to measure wind speed or humidity or

barometric pressure or whatever. And the and send either record it and then you retreat the balloon and see what the recordings were, or if it has some sort of transfre modern ly, it will transmit back to a computer exactly, yeah, or at least a radio station, so you'll get some sort of report back on current atmospheric conditions and in the upper atmosphere where you know, you can't just go outside and say it's raining, you know, this is more like what are the directions of of airflow at higher

elevation the temperature exactly. Uh. In n a Russian meteorologist attached a radio mediocraft to a sounding balloon. Oh there's some thunder out there, And that was the development of what we consider the modern weather balloons. So the previous weather balloons were kind of early attempts at using balloons

together more information. But this is when we're actually starting to get information in real time radioed back very early on still and by six that's when the Weather Bureau began operation of weather balloons, collecting information such as atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, wind direction, and speed. So by six we're starting to

get a fairly robust weather reporting system. Uh. In ninety the weather breh jumps ship again and becomes part of the Department of Commerce, so once again playing hop scotch. Which is which is where it still is today, I believe. Yeah, although it's not the Weather Bureau anymore. We'll we'll talk about that in the second right. Also circuit circer World War two. Um, we started to see people flying into

hurricanes directly to study them. Yes, we call these crazy people, uh, brave people who really were really were trying to advance science. They were not doing this, you know, Willy nilly. This was wow. There when that storm's coming right up on us, it's hitting rant forest. Uh, it's a tornador. Um, it's not, it's just a thunder storm. Hey guys, it's Jonathan here. I got a storm rolling in. So I'm going to

take a quick break, but we'll be right back. Is also when Roger Jensen started to become active, and he is one of the people that we referred to as an early storm chaser, right. I believe he chased his first storm in nineteen fifty three with his father. That's the date that I have. Oh yeah, I got I just had. Nineteen forties was when he started. But it's that was that was a very general kind of answer from the site I was looking at a time, maybe

in fact more accurate and uh. Roger Jensen was was a Turkey processing plant worker and farmer who got deeply involved in the storm in the growing storm chasing movement. He was, yeah, really one of the founders there, right, another one being David Hold And you have some information about him, right, Um. I think he began in nineteen sixty five and following his his first experience there, he

chased storms just all the time. He was from False Church, Virginia. Yes, and yeah, he was very much active in that, along with another UM scientist of one of the first storm chasing scientists, Neil Ward. Uh. Again in a very early storm chaser. Meanwhile, while all this storm chasing is starting,

and it's just the earliest days of storm chasing. Back in ninety eight, there was an Air Force captain who later became a colonel named Robert Miller and also Major Ernest Fawbush, who were the first on record in the United States to successfully forecast a tornado. They actually forecasted

in central Oklahoma. They were observing conditions that were very similar to a tornado that had hit the base four days earlier, and they said, these conditions are ripe for another tornado based on all that information, and so they actually began to discuss with the higher ranked members of the base there about whether or not they should take action. Ultimately, they decided that they should prepare for the potential of another tornado. So they acted as if another tornado was

going to hit. The next day, another tornado did hit the base. That was two tornadoes that hit the very same base within the span of five days, which was, you know, pretty remarkable. I mean, you're talking about again, a massive area, and for two tornadoes to hit the same place within the span of a week is pretty rare. But yeah, that was the first successful forecasting of a tornado on record in the United States. UM and nine, the Weather Bureau provoked a ban on mentioning tornadoes forecasts.

So you might wonder why was there a ban in place. Why could not weather forecasters say, hey, conditions are right for tornado. Here are the reasons. One, tornadoes at that time, in particular, were largely mysterious forces that were just kind of considered acts of God, that these were events that would come down strike with incredible fury, things that would

say insight, large spread panic Exactly. The thought was that you would do more harm than good by saying, hey, there may be a tornado on the way, because no one knew exactly what they were supposed to do. By n fifty, they the Weather Bureau had decided that this was no longer a responsible course of action, and that, in fact, it would revoke that ban. By the way, the band was not always a formal band. Sometimes it was just highly discouraged from mentioning that conditions were right

for a tornado. But at this point they said that that was no longer going to be an official policy. Uh in uh, you had mentioned that earlier about the storm chasers. That's also the same year when the Weather

Bureau changed. It's uh, well, there was a reorganization of the Department of Commerce, and so that reorganization ended up creating something called the Environmental Science and Services Administration, or SA, and that organization changed the Weather Bureau to the National Weather Service, which will sound a lot more familiar I think to many of our listeners. Um. And in nineteen seventy the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration formed and replaced SA.

So that's also known as Noah in o a A. We got to see the headquarters of Noah. We we visited Discovery headquarters up in Maryland right down the street. Yeah, we saw Noah, and then people from Noah invited us to go and see their stuff and talk to them, which we are totally going to do as soon as we can arrange it because that is mega awesome, cool,

really exciting. UM. Part part of what Noah was doing in the nineteen seventies was establishing sky Warn, which is a volunteer program that that currently certainly at the time it did not have this money. It currently has like two thousand trained volunteers working across the country. Is a network to to observe and report storms. Yeah, in nineteen seventy two, you had the first federally funded storm chasing program. Where before we had storm chasers, but they were all

acting more or less on their own. They had, you know, no official government backing, at least not from the federal level. And now that had changed in nineteen seventy two, you had a federally funded program. Uh, their first sampling of a tornado wouldn't happen until nineteen seventy three in Oklahoma, which as we know right there in the middle of tornado Alley. Uh Now, I'm going to skip a whole bunch of years here only to mention one of the

most famous programs in storm chasing, which is Vortex. Vortex is an acronym. Of course, it stands for a Verification of the Origin of Rotation in Tornadoes experiment. So the E X and VORTEX is from X barriment that was led by Eric Resmussen of Noah's National Severe Storms Laboratory or in S. S. L UM And hey, I said laboratory instead of laboratory. You did it. I didn't even have to think about that time. Vortex, by the way,

was not the only program called that. There was a second one, Vortex two, which launched in two thousand nine. But there was an unusually quiet tornadoes season in two thousand nine, which meant only one tornado was sampled that year. It was sampled in Lagrange, Wyoming, but it was the most intensively observed tornado at that time because there was so much equipment present at that moment. In two, Vortex to actually sampled quite a few super cells and a

few week tornadoes as well, and gathered a lot of information. Now, during this span of time. There were a lot of other UH storm chasers that were active right UM. During during the nine seventies, UH David Hoadley founded storm Track magazine. It was becoming that hobbyist movement that we were talking about a little bit before. UM and and you know, he was publishing articles in National Geographic and Scientific American UM.

There were programs on the History Channel in ABC. UM. It was becoming very much in the public eye, especially with the creation of these government agencies or the recreation of these government agents. Yeah. Yeah, some of these agencies. By the way, you know, we talked about it. You know, the eighteen sixties, there were there was more than a hundred years of information gathered. UH. And it's interesting that it was kind of a you know, that chain was

never broken. It It did transform quite a few times,

but they remained like the information itself remained intact. And it really wasn't until we started getting um uh you know, small commercial or small non commercial vehicles, UM cars that people could go out and drive around in too to respond very quickly to the movement of a storm and UM and furthermore, the UH you know, communication technology advancing to the point where through through radio and the beginnings of satellite and cell phones and etcetera, that we can

start to be responsive right right. In fact, we're gonna talk some more about that technology, the stuff that storm chasers use in order to track storms and to measure their impact. We'll also talk about how we classify tornadoes, which is an interesting story all on its own. But before we get into all of that, let's take a quick moment to thank our sponsor, Audible. Audible dot com is the leading provider of downloadable digital audio books and

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to get that free audio book download of your choice. Alright, so back to tornadoes. Let's talk about how we measure how strong a tornado is. It's actually kind of an interesting story. Yeah, there's a scale called the Fugita scale. Yeah, the Fugita Pierson Tornado scale. Originally in its in its first format, it ranged from F zero up to theoretically F twelve. F twelve would have measured the wind speed at mock one, which is the speed of sound. I

don't I don't like that idea. So well, uh, those people would say that that to really think of the scale and practical terms, you would go from F zero to F six, the idea being that anything over F six would have probably not we never would see wind speeds at that intenscy. Hey, man, don't argue with me, thunder. I'm just saying what I read. I really hope that's actually coming through on the mic, because if not, we sound really just crazy. Particularly so it's okay, there really

is thunder out there. You might not hear it, but we do anyway. So the scale was proposed back in ninete and it was proposed by Professor Fujita and Alan Pearson, who was the director of the National Severe Storm Forecast Center at that time. And it's kind of a weird scale in the way. Um it's a scale that determines the tornado's strength based upon the amount of damage it did, right, And the problem being that, um, we've never really been very good at measuring how powerful a tornado is at

the time, because first of all, they're pretty unpredictable. Second of all, they have been very quickly and end very quickly. And third of all, they're so powerful that our sentation gets pretty banged up. Yeah it gets it gets jankie. Yeah, you don't really end up with like a working sensor after a tornado has finished playing with it in many In many cases, so getting a tornado's wind speed while

the tornado is actually active is incredibly difficult. Like you said, Lauren, we don't even know where they're going to form or where they're going to go from and to that we don't know what path they'll take. Um So getting an accurate reading on wind speed while it's happening is really hard to do, right. And of course we can tell how fast they're traveling along the ground, how sure clouds are going in relation to the ground due to Doppler radar. Yeah, yeah,

we can. We can track a tornado and say, all right, the tornado itself traveled at a speed of sixteen miles per hour from west to east, like we can say that what's going on within it? It's very different, much more mysterious. So Professor Fagitta and Alan Pearson came up with a scale where they would look at the damage that was left after a tornado had passed through and said what speed of wind would be required in order

to do this amount of damage. In other words, we were establishing how strong the tornado was after it had already happened by just looking at the devastation that had left. Now, the early scale was not terribly specific, and uh was not really or maybe I should say not terribly precise. There was an attempt to increase the precision and create the enhanced Fujita Pearson scale. Yeah, every first two thousand seven was when it was updated. We call e F not just F. So if you ever hear like an

F five tornado, that's really using an outdated format. It's really e F five what we would say now And what does that translate to in terms that we mere mortals can understand? Well, First of all, the way they determine the scale is they look at the type of damage that's done and to the type of structures or landscape that it hits. So to really determine that, they look at, you know, if you say that a building was completely demolished, what was the type of building right now?

How is how is it built, how sturdy was it in the first place, what materials went into making it exactly? And then and then and there's this really complex fact sheet that they have ranked out of different types of buildings and feel like twenty eight or twenty nine different designations for the type of building or landscape. And then they numerical scale for how much damage was done to from one day eight right, so eight being the greatest.

So if you had like a concrete steel reinforced building and the devastation was at eight that was the most unimaginably powerful tornado that could have possibly hit us. And then here's the thing, there's no upper limit to this scale, because there may be tornadoes that can destroy the strongest stuff we build old, and since we're basing it on devastation, you can't get more devastating than total loss. Right, So if you have total loss, you essentially say that was

a really powerful tornado. You know, you can't get more specific than that, because it could be that it's more powerful than our scale would even indicate. But after you've lost everything, that's kind of a moot point, right right, which is basically what they're saying with a with a e F five would be wind speeds over two hundred miles an hour, yeah, which, yeah, you get into a point where strong frame houses could be lifted into the air and carried a considerable distance before it was dropped

again to oz for example. Yeah, So e F zero would be the lowest. That's between sixty five miles per hour winds. Then at e F one would be two miles per hour. Two goes up to a hundred and thirty five miles per hour, three goes up to a hundred and sixty five four goes up to two hundred and then anything over that. Yeah, five now, and in the old scale you had up to F six really was what was being described. And under that old scale and F six tornado was called an inconceivable tornado. Was

it for real? Yes, that's amazing. I don't think that tornado means what you think it means, um. But at that point they said that the wind speeds were unlikely to happen at that intensity that was described as three D nineteen to three hundred and seventy nine miles per hour.

I think the highest on record is three I believe, which is why would be the F six And that the idea here was that you might not even be able to tell that it was in F six tornado because anything from F five would leave essentially total devastation in its wake, right, so more total devastation, they said, Essentially you would have to verify it by looking at the evidence of the ground swirl pattern. Yeah, it's kind

of crazy. So the point being that it's about the best we can do simply because again it's really hard to get a read on a tornado while it's happening. We really can only look at what happened afterward and say, well, based upon this, we deduce the tornado was x strong. You know. So with that in mind, what is the kind of gear that we use for storm chasing and measuring this kind of stuff? I mean, you've got your basic weather uh sensors, things like a barometer, which reads

barometric pressure. In general, tornado's form after a drop in air pressure, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a sudden drop followed by a tornado. The drop can actually happen several days before a tornado forms if there's a low pressure system moving in on a broad scale. So it's also very difficult to measure barometric pressure within a tornado because the instruments very rarely survived. However, we will talk about uh someone who did manage to do that.

That will be towards the end of our pot cast. Um. Then there's the anemometer, right, there's there's blade and anemometers and thermometers. And I had to I had to steady myself to say anemometer, you did, you didn't? He took a release afterwards, UM, And the analog blade ones are if you've ever seen a like a spoked series of arms or cups perched atop field cylinder. That's that is why. Yeah,

it's designed to measure wind speed. So if you've ever seen one of those things, it looks like it's a little pin wheel type thing, sometimes horizontally aligned with little cups at the end of the arms. It's spinning around in a circle. Uh. This does not tell us anything about wind direction, but it does tell us about wind speed. Essentially, you're talking about how quickly is this thing spinning, and from that we can derive how how fast the wind is blowing. It only really works at the wind is

blowing in a steady direction. If it starts blowing in various directions, that can really mess with the readings. But um, you know that that's how we kind of determine wind speed. Of course, thermometers tell us things about temperature, uh, and we can learn about humidity through various means. So getting

to the basic gears of storm chasers. A lot of the basic gears the kind of stuff that you might have at your disposal already, things like laptop computers, which WiFi, digital cameras, video cameras that are both for video or for still photography, radio's walkie talkies, ham CB anything that they can get their hands on, police scanners, that kind of stuff. Stuff that allows them to keep track of

the movement of weather systems. Uh, you know, anything that will give them the most up to date, mediate communication with anyone who is providing information about that storm. Right. And then you know, the video cameras are obviously there to document the actual storms, to watch their behavior, to take footage, possibly to sell that footage later on, or maybe it's just so that you can use it for research purposes. Uh, it could be a combination purposes, journalists

purposes obviously. Yeah, and so those are those are your basic, uh, pieces of equipment. There's some interesting approaches to studying tornadoes, some of which are not necessarily used that frequently today. Did you run into the term tornado photo grammy tree? I did not photographm A tree is an older form and we don't tend to use it as much because it's not terribly precise. That's the use of film or video to determine the speed of movement of some kind

of tracer element. So you take a tracer element as a point of reference. This is not necessarily something that you've introduced to the tornado. It may be something that the tornado has already picked up, like I don't know, a tractor, and it's usually a large piece of debris of or some sort of persistent element in the cloud itself. And from this you can start to infer what the wind speed is with varying and sometimes unknown reliability. So you analyze how the winds beat is by measuring the

movement of this this persistent element. You know, you're how frequently is it coming around over and over? And from that you can sit there and say, well, the wind speed appears to be this. It was used more in the nineteen seventies and the nine eighties, but we kind of replace this with something that's far more reliable, namely Doppler radar. Uh. In fact, we have Doppler radar that's mobile. It's called Doppler on wheels or Dow Dow and Doppler on wheels. Those are the main tools used in the

effort to determine the strength of tornado winds today. So that raises the question what is Doppler radar and how does that work? Well? The Doppler effect we we have talked about on the show before. But it is the effect of electromagnetic waves crunching up as something moves towards you, right right. It's same thing with sound, right, So it's not it's any kind of wave. If it's moving toward you, the frequency of the way of increases because the object

is actually moving, uh, towards you. If it's moving away, the frequency decreases. Those waves along gate. So in sound and for once, it's amazing that we can't hear it because whenever we record tech stuff there seems to always be sirens going off in the background. But with sound, like if a police car has its siren running and it's coming towards you, you might hear a higher pitch and then after it passes you, it goes to a lower pitch. That's an example of the Doppler effect with

sound waves. Same thing is true with electromagnetic waves. And radar uses electronomagnetic waves to kind of get an idea of where other objects are. Radio waves right, um, it's it will shoot a very quick like millisecond burst of radio waves called a pulse, called a pulse out you know, hopefully towards an object or sometimes just to see what's

out there. And um, and then it will measure the length of time between when it's sent and when an echo comes back, and we'll also measure the the the Doppler effect, the phase is the phase of that of that wave. So between the phase of the wave and how long it took for the wave to return back from the echo of the wave to return back, it can determine the location and uh, whether or not something's

moving toward it or away from it. And in a vague concept of how fast by kind of mathematically computing, if you measure between pulses, you start to get an idea, Oh, well, not only is it moving towards me, but it's moving towards me at this general speed. So double on wheels of course very useful because that means that you can move the the the radar around so that you can get a better idea of the speed of the storm itself and even get an idea of the strength of

the tornado. Right. However, these these vehicles have to stay between two and eight miles away from a tornado to be effective, right, And it's mostly effective if it's encountering stuff that is fairly large in the in the relative scheme of things. So in other words, if there's precipitation, that's great. That means that there's more stuff for the radar waves to bounce off of, and that could be.

If it's larger range ups, that's even better. If it's hailstones, that's fantastic because that gets a lot more for the Doppler. For anyone who's caught underneath it, hailstones are terrible. You do not want to be under them. But for for the purposes of radar, it works really, really well. And I think the strongest wind speed determined from a DOW is at least from the data I was able to find.

Keep in mind, some of this data is several years old because all of it comes from government sources and reports can take a while and to become publicly available. But the strongest I was able to find was three hundred and two miles per hour. So I saw I saw a report of one from Oklahoma in that that that recorded the world record speed of three Okay, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, my my latest records are later than your latest. Rick.

Hey guys, Jonathan, again, storm has gone through. But now I kind of have to go outside and pick up some branches. So we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back. There's a specific type of radar that has been used for some storm tracking technology. It's called smart R, which is again yet another acronym, stands for Shared Mobile Atmospheric Research and Teaching Radar. This is one that is mainly used for research. It's used both

for hurricanes and for tornadoes and UM. So you know that this combination of technology is used to really get as much information about strength and speed as we possibly can so that we can add to our body of knowledge. UM. And then there's some private chase teams and tours that have marine radars mounted on their vehicles. However, you should know this is decoration. Marine radars are useless when it

comes to storm chasing and storm tracking. It's promotional purposes only they're not used in research UM and actually marine radar signals can interfere with research units like DOWS. So don't do it. Storm chasing companies, don't put marine radar on your trucks and then use them. Yeah, that's pretty silly. There are some projects that have been very interesting but not very successful. Uh. TOTO is one of my favorites.

TOTO standing for total BO Tornado Observatory now TOTO, of course, is also obviously a reference to fantastic documentary about a tourist from Kansas who visits an exotic land and kills the one of the leaders of that land, two of them. Actually. Total was developed by Dr Allen Bettard and Carl Ramsey in ninety nine, first deployed by them in nineteen d one, and basically it was an oil drum, like a fifty five gallon oil drum with some stuff in it, with

some instruments in it. The idea that the tornado would pick this drum up and we would gather the information from the instruments inside, and hopefully the drum would protect the instruments so that the information would be usable. Right, So, how did that work out? Well? Um, it weighed four hundred pounds, which is or so and so not actually

very well. I mean, first of all, you know they were working in the early nine eighties when, uh we did not have the kind of communication technology that would allow people to really effectively chase storms. So it was it was it was pretty much a crapshoot of whether or not they would leave this thing in a place that would were likely to get picked up. Keep in mind, they don't have the benefit of a laptop with WiFi,

so they have radio. They could have radio, so they could they could get radio updates, but without the ability to actually track a storm on a computer and see it and be able to anticipate where it's going to move, it made it much more difficult to get to the

right place at the right time. Sure Also, it took thirty seconds to deploy from the back of a of a specially created truck um which is which sounds like a short period of time, but but that is tremendously long when a tornado is bearing down on you, yea, or if you're anticipating a tornado, keep in mind we were talking about that wall cloud, which was the indicator that a tornado could touch down within ten to twenty minutes.

If it takes you half an hour to unpack your equipment, just finding out where the tornado might touch down and then getting the equipment out and set on the ground. First of all, it may be too late, maybe that the tornado has touched down while you were trying to get your your equipment out, in which case you may be in serious danger or things conditions could have changed to the point where the place where you thought was the perfect spot is no longer anywhere close to where

the tornado may touch down. So it was very difficult. It as a surprise to no one. Was never really picked up by a tornado. Uh No, it did it. A tornado did run over it once in um when the NSSL had had taken over for it, and um, mostly the tornado just knocked it over and damaged the instruments. Yeah so, but then it served as inspiration for another fictional device, didn't, Yes, it did. Toto was the inspiration for Dorothy, which was the fictional device in the film Twister. Yeah.

So the movie that made us believe that a cow could be picked up by a tornado and still be perfectly cow like, willing to move at any rate. Yeah, and and not turned into hamburger. Um. Yeah it was. Uh. Dorothy was the name of the device they wanted to deploy in the film and try and get it in the path of the tornado. It was inspired by the real world analog Toto in in reality, Toto was scrapped in ya um. But yeah. However, there are many other

instruments that have been created for similar purposes. UM. One is called a turtle, which is a kind of hub cap looking little devices that are They were debuted, I believe in nineteen six, and we're we're on that beginning edge of digital technology. They were not meant to be

picked up. They were actually designed as heavy, squat and aerodynamic, the idea being that they could withstand the the wind forces of a tornado so that you could retrieve them and find out all the information you needed things like temperature, pressure, humidity, and not just get picked up like the like total was. It was just meant to be there so that you

can recover it afterward the tornado had passed through. There are also snails which are similar in appearance, but are outfitted with these seismic sensors because there was a theory at some point that UM, if we can study the vibrations that tornadoes create in the ground, it we would be able to learn new fun stuff about them. Huh interesting, I had not heard about that. UM also dellocams and Observation zero O Z s ozes. Okay, I just I

just got that. I'm sorry, Dorothy Toto and OZ right UM, which are which are camera equipment that that has been designed to be put in the place, and I totally forgot to write down there's also munchkins, because, as it turns out, storm chasers get hungry and occasionally stop at Dunkin Donuts and they just order a bunch of those to eat while they're waiting. I just figured that we might as well keep on going down this Wizard of Oz route. So what about our vehicles? Yeah, okay, so

you're talking about the TIV. Yes, the Tornado intercept vehicle. Uh, there's actually been a couple of these, um and in fact, there well, tornado intercept vehicle is kind of a generic name at this time. At this point, you're really talking about any kind of reinforced vehicle, but specifically we're talking about essentially, you take you take a pretty heavy vehicle, one that's already pretty rugged, and then you turn it into a reinforced possibly armor plated, uh possibly augmented vehicle,

something that looks like it came out of Mad Max. Yeah. Yeah, you might be wondering, you know who rules Bartertown by the time you see one of these things. Uh, they are meant to withstand high wind speeds, hail, massive, massive trauma, they're reinforced, and sometimes they have hydraulic panels that can

actually extend down to the sides of the vehicle. The idea being that if you extend the hydraulic panel so that it goes from the ground and and leaves no space under the vehicle, then you can't have wind sweeping underneath the vehicle and and lift it off or push it off. It's it's perch um. Some of them even have stabilizing jacks that will that will extend down and into the ground and stable again, stabilize this so that when heavy wind hits it, it doesn't rock over and

and tilt over and fall right um. The tip too specifically was was was one that was created that wighed about eight tons. Yeah, that's a pretty hefty vehicle and also usually has has windows designed so that someone with a camera can get as many different angles as possible. The the the original was created by one Sean Casey, who was an Imax cinematographer who was working towards some

some documentary pieces. I remember seeing bits from that. I never got to see the full I assume they eventually had a more, probably more than one documentary based on this, but I do remember seeing excerpts of this, and they were pretty fantastic. I also remember seeing at least one clip where the crew was concerned that his desire to get the best footage was possibly a little reckless. That's probably the best way for me to put it. I have no doubt that that that could be a thing

that could have happened. Well, what kind of information have storm chasers gathered? Mainly we're talking about atmospheric conditions, things like the rotation of the clouds, getting more information about that, more information about the actual sequence of events that leads up to tornado formation, the behavior of the tornadoes themselves, the strength of the tornado. Uh, the you know, We've got some information about barometric pressure, some things about temperature,

wind speeds and all this kind of stuff. Humidity. It's really just trying to get as much data as possible and sift through it to learn what is it that

really makes these things happen? Right, Because some of the leading theories for a long time had a lot to do with um with temperature differences, right up until we got some data in from tornadoes that said that temperature differences in in in airflow do not have to exist for a tornado to be created, right, doesn't have that's not not a not a necessary factor, right, and so you know, it's it's it's kind of one of those things where the more we learn, the more we realize

that we have to learn, and it is so difficult to get good readings. Yeah, and we will come so dangerous. Yeah, We're talking about such huge forces here that getting a good reading is just, uh, it's risky and a lot of the stuff we've developed just can't live up, can't hold up to those kind of forces. It can, as we said, be very financially viable. Um one war in Fadely is a kind of rock star storm chaser whose photos of storms can sell for over ten tho dollars

a piece. Yeah, yeah, which has inspired a lot of people to try and follow in his footsteps. In fact, that's one of the big controversies. And we can go ahead and move into the controversy of storm chasing. One of them is that with documentaries with reality television, I mean, we do have storm chasers on Discovery. We've got or we had I believe it was. It was ended in

two eleven. Yeah, So, but but there's been some controversy that these sort of things have inspired lots and lots of people to either pursue it as a hobby or go into the tourism trade, that sort of stuff, and that that self can add to the already significant danger of storm chasing for research purposes or even as a profession, especially considering the fact that if you've got if you do have research professionals who are out there trying to be safe, and you get in their way bad times

for everybody you can, you can cause traffic jams right when people need to have an open escape route in case the storm changes dramatically, and that can happen. Storm storms can travel in one direction and then suddenly veer off and you need to be nimble enough to be able to respond to that. But if you've got a line of cars behind you and that's the only way out, then you're kind of stuck. It also means adding the danger of first responders needing to get to locations after

a tornado has passed through. So it's one of those things that has raised some concerns because legally speaking, there are no rules or laws regarding storm chasing apart from obeying traffic laws and things like trespassing. Clearly, you are not supposed to trespass on people's property. You aren't supposed to, uh, you know, drive the wrong way down the street, that kind of stuff. But beyond that, there's not really anything. You know, there's nothing illegal about storm chasing, but there

have been some discussions about that. UM and in we had a tragedy in which three storm chasers, famous ones, Tim Samaris, Paul samarrass Son and Carl Young. Uh, they died in h an accident. They were caught in a tornado near El Reno, Oklahoma. This was on May thirty one and ending. They had been part of the Discovery show storm Chasers and full full disclosure, full disclosure. We are hastof works as a part company Discovery. Now we should also say that that they were experienced storm chasers,

and they were. They were widely regarded as responsible members of the community, and they had provided quite a bit of scientific research. Absolutely. Tim in fact founded twist decks, which which is similar to vortex. It's it's an acronym for the tactical weather instrumented sampling in Tornado's experiment. Yeah, he had an engineering background, uh, and he successfully deployed a turtle that recorded the barometric pressure of two different tornadoes.

One in two thousand three recorded a barometric drop in pressure of forty mill of bars, and another one another probe, recorded a one d milli bar drop in a violent tornado in South Dakota. UM Later on, other turtles would record more baro metic pressure, but his was the first one to do that. So he was really contributing to the scientific knowledge of tornadoes. And so, uh, their deaths were very tragic obviously, and also raised up a conversation

about is storm chasing something responsible? Is it okay? Should should there be for other things, for for non human

ways to collect the stata? And and you know, it's one of those things again where there's There's not been any official movement as far as I'm aware, but people like the Kansas Emergency Management Association president Brian Stone said it was worth looking into establishing at least some rules to guide storm chasers, if not formal laws, at least uh kind of a code really that storm chasers need to follow. Now, keep in mind, Tim Samaris and his crew were experts, I mean they were they were known

for being very safety conscious. So this really shows how unpredictable. These storms can be and even if you are at the top of your game and you are very careful, tragedy can strike. Yeah, supposedly the storm that that they were killed and killed another ten people out in Oklahoma and supposedly had one of those very quick turns that no one could have predicted. They probably blocked their escape routes. And the National Weather Service does not endorse storm chasing

because of the risk involved. However, they do welcome the reports that storm chasers bring in. So it's kind of, you know, it's one of those things where they say, yeah, we can't we can't say go out and be a storm chaser, but we will say that the data we get is invaluable. Yes, we can't put a price tag on that because it's it's helping us understand these systems and that's really the best way we know of doing it.

And through sky Warn. In fact, they will conduct spot or training classes across the United States if you're if you are very interested in storm chasing, I would recommend not probably going on one of the tours. I don't think they're necessarily responsible, but um, you can't. You know, some may be very good at following safety rules and some maybe a little more lax in that. It's hard to say. It's hard to say, but but Sky Warren

will will try. Yeah, you can do it. You can do this in the most responsible and safe way possible, which is that's the best thing. I mean, this is your passion, and this is you want to contribute to the scientific knowledge. I mean, I find that admirable. I personally also think it's crazy because I I've know well well, like I said, Lauren, and I can talk a little bit about our experience living through tornadoes. Uh, and I would never ever ever want to invite that experience on

me again if I can avoid it. What what? What? What did happen? Okay, all right, well I can talk about that. So. I grew up in northeast Georgia, near a city called Gainesville, which actually has a history of tornado problems. There was a tornado that moved through early in the twentieth century and laid the city to waste. I mean, it completely destroyed Gainesville. My grandfather worked in a textile mill in New Holland, Georgia, which is just

outside of Gainesville. And uh, he tells or he told the story he's passed on now, but he told a story about how working in the mill he was, you know, the tornado was bearing down the mill and he was moving toward the staircase to get down to a safe level, and as he was hitting the staircase, the roof of the building ripped off because of this tornado, the force of this wind. And uh, this was the same tornado

that essentially leveled the city. When I was growing up, we had several tornadoes passed over the area of town I lived in, which is called Oakwood, Georgia. I grew up there, and I can remember like there were there were houses that were within just a very short walk, like you just walked up a hill and you could see them that were completely leveled by tornadoes on a

couple of occasions. And I mean I remember huddling with my family at the base of our house, Um, not even sure if our house was going to be hit by these things. And uh, we had tornadoes passed directly over us where you know, sometimes a tornado will touch

down and then lift up and touched down again. In fact, there's even an argument about whether or not that counts as two separate tornadoes or the same one we've had that happened where a tornado went directly over our house, where it lifted up and then set back down a little bit further out. So um, you know, as a kid, that was definitely like that was a life defining experience, to the point where I had trouble with storms for a while after I was after that. These days storms

don't bother me so much. I can. I can handle that just fine. But if it starts turning like ominous, if I start noticing those little warning signs, I take cover, because it is serious business. I mean, it is absolutely terrifying to live through. Sure, yeah, I am. My My

experience is a lot more spotty than that. I remember being maybe maybe about five years old, and my my mother and U are extremely dedicated black Labrador retriever UM hurting me down into the basement and U. But I think that mostly by the time we got there, like by the time we heard about it and got down there,

the radio is already calling it off. So um. And and this is the to the two types of warnings that you may have heard of and had a tiny bit of confusion about, because I don't feel like they're very well publicized the differences between them all the time. Tornado watch is issued by the n o A a UH Storm Prediction Center meteorologists and and they are watching

the entire United States all the time. UM. Tornado warning, however, is issued by a local n o A a UH National Weather Service forecast office who is watching your designated area all the time and UH the warning indicates that there are spotters who have seen a touchdown and that you need to get to safety. The the watch is more that there are conditions that are favorable for a tornado. Tornado could could form under such conditions. Yeah, I've I've

seen so many of both. UM. It's one of the one of the risks of living in the Southeast United States, not again, not nearly as prone to tornadoes as other parts in the nation, which can get them even more regularly than we do. And I thought i'd close out. This is something that another storm chaser had said about the situation with with Tim Samaras and his son Paul

and Carl Young. His name is Renny vander Wedge, and I apologize if I have butchered that name, but he had this to say, and I thought it was interesting. And there's actually quite a bit that he has written about the storm chasing in general. But I thought this, this really bears attention in our podcast, So he said. Many storm chasers do a lot of good. Some are researchers trying to understand why some storms produced tornadoes and

others do not. Tim Samaras, for example, combined his background and engineering and whether to invent devices for measuring conditions inside a tornado. His research has been value able. Other researchers use mobile radar units to measure precipitation and wind inside a tornado from close range to gain a better understanding of how tornadoes develop. Other chasers are simply out there for the thrill of chasing, or to capture video

to sell to media outlets. But as tornado video has become plentiful on YouTube and other websites, chasers have had to get closer than ever to get the kind of footage that will earn them a paycheck. They often find themselves in the bears cage, which is chaser lingo for the part of the storm where tornado forms. Some have built vehicles to drive directly into a twister. This carries

enormous risk. Now, he teaches meteorology and bring students with him on trips where they they observe these stormfronts and the weather conditions, so that the meteorologists have direct experience with this before they go on to whatever their careers are. But I thought it was really interesting to have a professional opinion added in there, because of course, like we said at the very top of the show, this is and we've repeated several times, this is serious, dangerous business. Uh.

It's not something for just a casual attempt. You know, you definitely want experienced people around you. If you are interested in the field, that's amazing, but definitely seek out training and make sure that you're following this as as many safety procedures as you can because this is this is deadly stuff. And that wraps up this classic episode

of tech Stuff. Hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions for future topics of tech Stuff, go ahead and reach out to me on Twitter or Facebook. The handle for both of those is tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows e