Drone to probe birth of tornadoes

With help from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, tornado researchers this spring will deploy a novel tool of aerial warfare to better understand the weather conditions that lead to twisters.

For the first time, thanks to a 12-pound drone aircraft called the “Tempest,” researchers will be able to send sensors into an area of the storm called the “rear-flank downdraft,” which is believed to be pivotal in tornado formation.

The remote-controlled plane will be part of the VORTEX2 field study that will see more than 100 researchers shuttling an array of sophisticated weather sensors across thousands of miles of the Great Plains.

In an armada of more than 50 vehicles, they'll target the most promising supercell storm systems of the day. The region involved spans from Texas to the Dakotas.

This is the second and final year of the VORTEX Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment study. It begins Saturday and will last six weeks.

Adam Houston, a UNL meteorologist and assistant professor, and his students will assist researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder in flying the airplane.

CU has been responsible for getting the airplane to fly, while the UNL group will navigate the plane so that it gets to the right place in the storm.

The two universities tested their communications and control systems during last year's VORTEX expedition but weren't able to fly the plane because the Federal Aviation Administration hadn't provided authorization. This year, the FAA has provided the necessary OK.

UNL's crews will keep the plane in sight at all times and will only fly it in sparsely populated areas of southwestern Nebraska and the adjacent corners of Kansas and Colorado.

Louis Wicker, who is on the VORTEX steering committee and works with the National Severe Storms Lab, said the small plane is as crucial in this study as the advent of mobile Doppler radar was in the mid-1990s, the last time a similar tornado study was conducted.

The plane will be particularly helpful in recording the temperatures within the lower 1,000 feet of a storm.

Houston said scientists know that certain temperatures within a storm stimulate tornadoes. But they're not sure what that range is.

Down-rushing air in a downdraft has a cooling effect, but if a storm cools too much, for example, it loses energy and can't twist itself tightly enough to create a tornado.

“It's the Goldilocks dilemma,” Houston said. “It has to be just right.”

Given that these field studies occur rarely and are so costly, researchers are hoping for a more active tornado season this year in areas where they are allowed to conduct their research.

“We hope to learn a lot if one of those supercells will cooperate with us this year and stick close to the I-80 and I-70 corridor,” Wicker said.

Contact the writer:

444-1102, nancy.gaarder@owh.com

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