Major program taking close look at forming tornadoes

Storm chaser Eddie Weiss's recent McCook talk sponsored by the Rotary Club offered some interesting and potentially life-saving information.

As Weiss pointed out, real storm-chasing is nothing like the popular "Twister" movie, but it is an important task -- tornadoes have caused billions of dollars of damage over the years and kill dozens of people each year.

It's not unusual to see a storm chasing vehicle in Southwest Nebraska during the tornado season, but that experience will become more common this year with the implementation of a new major study this year.

Running from May 10 through June 13, some 50 scientists in 40 research vehicles, including 10 mobile radars, will take to the central United States in the Verification of Origin of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2 -- or VORTEX2 project. It's an $11.9 million program, funded by NOAA, the National Science Foundation, 10 universities and three non-profit organizations.

Preliminary results from this year's program will be reviewed this fall, and the crews will take to the field again next year to complete the study.

We're right in the center of the study area, which covers more than 900 miles of the central Great Plains, covering southern Sough Dakota, western Iowa, eastern Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, the Texas panhandle and western Oklahoma.

The original VORTEX experiment, which ran 1994 and 1995, traced the entire life cycle of tornadoes for the first time.

"An important finding from the original VORTEX experiment was that the factors responsible for causing tornadoes might happen on smaller time and space scales than scientists had thought," said Stephan Nelson, NSF program director for physical and dynamic meteorology.

Technological advances will allow for a more detailed sampling of a storm's wind, temperature and moisture, allowing for a better understanding of why tornadoes form and how to more accurately predict them.

We hope they succeed.

Not only will more accurate forecasting save lives, it should help reduce needless storm warnings that cause too many of us to ignore the really important ones.