LAST CHANCE, Colo. — Researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln were stunned.
The remote-controlled airplane was going up when it should have been going down.
This was the rear-flank downdraft. The winds were supposed to be flushing downward.
It would take all the muscle the little plane had to stay level and take readings from the back of the storm. No sensor has ever gathered data in this part of a storm — an area believed most important for generating tornadoes.
But during the VORTEX 2 study this month, they were finding the unexpected, the kind of gem that might help explain why tornadoes form.
UNL meteorologist Adam Houston could only hope the data would explain what was happening. The project is a collaboration between UNL and the University of Colorado-Boulder.
“We can't explain ... because we don't know what we've got,” Houston said. “There may be secrets revealed in the data we collected.”
— Staff writer Nancy Gaarder
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