Discovery Channel: Storm Chasers

A Typicial Down Day

Yesterday was another down day due to a major ridge that has been affecting the normal tornado season in tornado alley.  Are spirits are still up and we hope to see another tornado or two this year. Meanwhile, we are staying busy and having fun!

TornadoVideos.net's Aerial Attack!!!

Check out this video of the TornadoVideos.net remote-controlled plane that will be deploying parachute probes into tornadoes beginning in a week or so (weather permitting of course!).  The probe and plane technology was built at Radiance Technologies in Oxford, MS, and the plane itself was built by Bruce Tharpe at Bruce Tharpe Engineering.  The TVN RC Plane has a 12-foot wing span, and is capable of transporting 8-10 weather data and HD camera probes, designed to be sucked into the tornadic circulation by the attached parachutes.  Check out the video below for the demo of this aerial field project.  Stay tuned for more pictures and video of the plane in action this tornado season!

TornadoVideos.net/Radiance Technologies Radar Deployed INSIDE the Kirksville Tornado!

Two days before the Kirksville, MO tornado (May 13, 2009), we drove the SRV to Radiance Technologies in Oxford, MS, where engineers Hank Rinehart and Mik Wimbrow were building us a radar to measure the horizontal and vertical winds inside a tornado.  We named this radar CLOVER (Close Range Vertical Radar) since the primary goal is to measure the updraft/downdraft winds inside a tornado, which has never been accomplished to our knowledge.  On May 11, CLOVER was ready to acquire experimental data, so Hank and Mik attached the radar to the back-right of the roof of the SRV for our storm chase in Missouri on May 13.  Here are the pictures and video from the radar installation at Radiance:



Since the Kirksville chase was the first time deploying CLOVER in the field, Hank road with us and collected radar data when we were under wall clouds and inside the tornado.  The goal of this first chase was to collect experimental data so the radar software and hardware could be optimized at Radiance.  Instead, we got a little more than we bargained for and were able to collect wind data with CLOVER from inside an EF1 to EF2 tornado!  To our knowledge, this was the first time a mobile radar had collected data from within the tornado circulation.  Here is the video from the Kirkville tornado...For this experimental data collection chase, we oriented the radar antenna in the horizontal to measure the rotational winds.  We also measured a 97 mph wind out of the east with the roof-top mounted anemometer, which was in the northern weak side of the tornado, but correlated well with what we measured with CLOVER.  We'll likely be presenting the radar data soon, so stay tuned!

TIV Q&A (Send in your questions)

Hey everyone. There's just some bad weather ahead of us this next week or so, so I wanted to open up a Q&A and Ronan and I will answer a few of them for you guys! Stuff about our chasing history, favorite color, etc.

Of course, we will be chasing what we can, but should have some time to provide you with some answers

Send me some questions!

B

May 12th, 2009 TIV/Doghouse Texas Chase

The TIV team chased severe storms yesterday in West Texas.  The storms were fun, but yielded no tornadoes.  We hope that the storms today will be a little more "chaser friendly".  A moderate risk has been issued from Oklahoma to Illinois for this evening.  Another good chance at severe weather will roll into the central plains on Friday. Stay tuned as more updates and video will be on the way!

TIV Team Video from Ronan's Birthday!

Greetings! I woke up a cool hour and a half before my alarm today (my body only wanted 5 hours of sleep I suppose) and thought to give you all another treat! Early in the season we took Ronan out to dinner for his birthday. Being a storm chaser, you miss out on anything that happens during storm season, so if you are lucky enough to have a spring birthday like Ronan you don't get to share it with your friends and family. I think we gave him a good one this year, presents in a hotel lobby and dinner at the Big Texan!



Sean has begun filming his IMAX film, we did the first scene a few days ago and are really happy with how it turned out. It was a lot of fun and a huge relief for Sean to get officially started on it (the non tornado parts).

We're chasing today, watch the LiveTracker and wish us luck!


B

Update from the field! Pictures from TornadoVideos.net off-days

Since the big Texas Panhandle Tornado Fest a week or so ago, we've been swamped with marginal chase setups and a slight tornado drought.  To pass the time, we shop for motorcycle vests at truck stops, photoshop mustaches on each other, and watch the tornado videos from late April over and over again.  At left is what storm chaser Chris Chittick would look like as a firefighter.

The upcoming weather pattern will continue to be relatively quiet, so we have decided to travel to Radiance Technologies in Oxford, MS where we will get the single-beam radar attached to the top of the TVN Storm Research Vehicle.  Given are ability to close to within 50 feet of strong tornadoes with our new vehicle armor, we will use this radar to measure the strong updraft winds within a tornado, which have been shown to possibly even exceed the horiztonal rotation winds!  It's unfortunate we did not have this radar installed for our first two successful intercepts, but our thinking is that the second half of May through June will be extremely active, and the slower moving storm motions will make data collection a lot easier!
I'll be posting pictures of the radar in the next few days, but first, here are some pictures of the TornadoVideos.net chasers and production crew from the last several days. 
      

 

To close out this blog entry, here is some INSANE video from April 29 in the Texas Panhandle, the same day we drove into the western side of of the tornado circulation when a massive cone tornado was crossing the road in front of us.  This video was shot by David Drummond, who is a storm chaser on the TornadoVideos.net network.  Initially, David and us were in the same position watching the large tornado touch down to our north and move toward our position.  As the tornado was about 200 yards away, David decided to race and beat the tornado before it crossed the road, while we hung back to try and drive into the western side of it!  EXTREME VIDEO!  Take my word for it...this season of Storm Chasers is going to blow last year out of the water.

TIV Team hopes for a good chase today

Our forecast doesn't look promising in the next week so today could be our only play for a while. On the bright side, this will give Sean opportunity to work on his IMAX film. Watch the LiveTracker this afternoon, hopefully we'll have something good to show!

LiveTracker

B

Meet Marcus, the TIV Medic

Marcus, a former Navy corpsman and current surgical assistant, has been chasing with us for many years and his current job is to keep us safe and in good health. I had a splinter the other day and had to work hard to convince him to not set me up with an IV drip. He is trying to convince us to let him do little procedures when he isn't helping out with the TIVs. Our crew is in good hands to say the least.

B

More Tornadoes in Texas for TornadoVideos.net!

TornadoVideos.net intercepted 3 tornadoes east of Plainview, Texas a few days ago (April 29), including a VERY close encounter with a strong cone tornado crossing the road in front of us.  We had the vehicle in the western side of the circulation, and 4-5 large power poles were knocked down as the tornado moved through.  This has been an INSANE year so far, and I'll update with pictures from the field as soon as we get a day off!  We also saw a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake in southeast New Mexico on April 28 after intercepting a tornadic supercell south of Carlsbad.  We have pictures to prove it!