Thunder ahead
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Storm Prediction Center outlook for Wednesday indicates a moderate risk in Ohio Valley.
These are big days for tornado researchers. Vortex2 kicks off this week. Over 100 research scientists are nomadically roaming the Midwest for a month. It's the biggest tornado research project in history. Here are some numbers.
100 scientists
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40 vehicles
10 mobile Doppler radars
10 mobile mesonet vehicles packed with weather instruments
38 "deployable" instruments (think "Dorothy" from Twister)
As teams of researchers stalk tornado prey over the next month they will be measuring rotation, wind speed and circulation patterns as never before. They will fly unmanned aerial vehicles into storms and near tornadoes. They will lay out "tornado pods" ahead of advancing twisters in hopes of scoring a direct hit.
Current tornado warnings have a 70% false alarm rate. The average warning lead time for tornadoes that do touch down is 13 minutes. The goals of Vortex2 will be to reduce the false alarm rate for tornado warnings, increase lead time, and to find out why one storm can drop a deadly tornado while another similar looking storm on radar does not.
Let's hope they find some good answers. We can use them.
Keep an eye and ear out this week for thunderstorms. It looks like a potent cool front will trigger storms Tuesday into early Wednesday. It will be tough to pin down timing with this system, but we will probably get two waves of precip between early Tuesday and Wedneasday noon. Right now Thursday looks like the best bet for a dry sunny day.
PH