TechStuff Classic: How Storm Chasers Work

What are storm chasers? What kind of equipment do storm chasers use? What useful information have storm chasers gathered?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to text Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with our Heart Radio
and I love all things tech and today it's time
for another classic episode. We are going to listen to
how storm chasers work. This episode originally published on July

(00:27):
twenty two, two thousand thirteen, and we've been getting a
lot of storms here in Georgia, so it seems pretty
a proposed that we go back and revisit this, So
let's listen in. This is our warning, which we will
be repeating at the end of the episode. Storm chasing
is seriously dangerous business. This is not a hobbyist thing, um,

(00:51):
though some people treated that way. It is you are
putting yourself at serious risk when you are encountering major
storm fronts, including but not limited to tornadoes. So we
want to get all the way and um, the people
who go about storm chasing our professionals. They are researchers,
they have been trained, um and and they do serious work.

(01:13):
It's it's not just all about the thrill. I'm sure
that part of it for these people is a thrill.
But but but the number of tornadoes in the United
States has increased since the nineteen sixties, but the number
of deaths in the US has declined due to these
brave people's work. Right, we're learning more about these systems
and how to predict them. Now, granted, prediction is about

(01:34):
all we can do because these are major storm systems
that we don't understand so much energy, and the energy
and these storm systems rivals that of a nuclear bomb.
They can they can reach above three miles an hour. Yeah,
this is this is serious business. So let's talk a
little bit about what storm chasers are and what they do.

(01:55):
So they do tend to fall into three major categories.
You've at your scientific researchers, which I would say are
probably the majority of well until recently, anyway, we're the
majority of storm chasers. These are the men and women
who dedicate their their lives to studying storm systems, gathering data,
and trying to learn everything we can about them so

(02:16):
that our forecast models get more and more precise, so
that we can increase the levels of safety not just
of where we build things, but how we build them
and how to get people in out of harm's way.
So that's one group. Another group are professionals who are
trying to capture video or still images of storms and

(02:37):
then sell them to either a news outlet or a
magazine or television show, or just to any other type
of customer. So they're trying to turn storm chasing into profit.
And then your third category are your thrill seekers, who
are treating it like a hobby. They want they want
to witness the awesome power of a storm, which can

(02:58):
be really amazing to behold, but it is so dangerous. Yeah,
I would say that really technically most storm chasers fall
into all three categories in some way, shape or form.
I mean, you know, it's it's it's that's true. It's
not like it is a business. And most of them
do take footage while they're in the most of them
are also doing research and are probably excited about. Right,

(03:19):
You've got you've got some hobbyists who are just trying
to see a really cool storm. And you've got some
companies that are operating tourism where it's actually they're creating
a business where they're taking people out on tours to
try and see one of these storms. Uh So there,
it's not necessarily that you you only belong to one category.
You might span multiple categories, but that's generally how folks

(03:42):
kind of classify them. Uh Now, really, when it comes
down to what we need to talk about, what is
an actual tornado, because that's mainly what storm chasers are
concerned with. They also will take a look into huge
thunderstorm systems, super cells, things like that. Uh. Also, some
storm chasers will have some experience with things like hurricanes,

(04:05):
which are different from tornadoes. Yeah, it is. It is
kind of um implied that hurricane chasers are not really
storm chasers because you're not so much chasing a hurricane
you know where it is. Yeah, it's pretty obvious. Yeah,
hurricanes are very different from tornadoes. Tornadoes are, Like we said,
they are pretty mysterious. We don't understand fully how they form,

(04:29):
what it is that's making them form, or why they
form in once circumstances. But in another set that seems identical,
they don't. So that means there's there's probably some other
factors there that we just aren't really completely aware of.
Uh that creates some randomness in this event which would
cause them to form in one case and not another.

(04:50):
So I guess we need to kind of define what
a tornado is. Okay, well, so it's a it's a swirling,
massive air um It is spawned from a areas of
severe thunderstorms called super cells, which are storm clouds that
can reach like six miles up into the atmosphere. These
are tall, tall cloud systems, and it has enough energy

(05:13):
to create a cyclone, a spinning air right now, if
we want to go into an even more in depth definition,
the Glossary of Meteorology says that it's a violently rotating
column of air pendant from a cumuli form cloud or
underneath a cumuli form cloud, and often but not always
visible as a funnel cloud. So literally, in order for

(05:36):
a vortex to be classified as a tornado, it must
actually be in contact with the ground and otherwise otherwise
it is just a funnel right, yeah, So it has
to be in contact with the ground, has to be
from the ground all the way up to the cloud base.
If it's not all the way up to the cloud base,
it could be what is called a gust nado or
you know some people call them like you know, even
little dust storms you'll see like a little twisting motion.

(05:58):
Those are not actually tornadoes unless they extend all the
way up to the cloud base. So it has to
be from the cloud base to the ground for it
to actually be a tornado. Now, usually within a tornado
you've got wind sheer going on. That's that's winds at
different altitudes that are blowing in different directions. Um, that
that end up, you know, creating this rotation. Yeah, and
the rotation in the northern hemisphere tends to be counterclockwise

(06:22):
and in the southern hemisphere it tends to be clockwise.
But that's not a hard and fast rule. You can
actually have the same way that that you can technically
in the northern hemisphere. See water go down the drain. Yeah. Yeah.
The core Lanus effect is one of those things that
a lot of people will cite when it comes to
this sort of stuff that really applies to huge bodies,

(06:44):
not tiny ones. But in this relatively tiny ones, I
should say. But in this case, you can actually find
storm systems that have both counter clockwise and clockwise moving
tornadoes within one system. So it's not like a in
fast rule, it's just more of a tendency. So. Um,
there's also this thing called a messo cyclone. All right,

(07:07):
this is a a twisting vortex of air that goes
through a cloud system. But imagine that it's horizontal, all right,
So it doesn't it's not it's not vertical yet. It's
so it's a messo cyclone. It's kind of like what
a tornado would look like if you put it on
its side up in the clouds, all right, and then
you get these these wind sheer uh factors, these these

(07:30):
sharp moving horizontal winds that can telt the messo cyclone
so that it is upright. And if it does in
fact go upright and the base of it touches the ground,
that's when you get your tornado. And like I said,
you can have a very similar set of circumstances that
in one case spawn a tornado and then another do not.

(07:53):
Right right, Um, what what helps with the tornado is
when you get these inflow bands, which are which are
ragged bands of cumulance clouds that that um extend out away,
usually to the south or southeast here in the northern hemisphere.
Um and uh. It suggests that the storm is is
gathering low level air from several miles away and and
sucking in that that hot moist air that is going

(08:16):
to be fueling the storm. Right now, I've heard another
term when it comes to tornadoes, and I wonder if
you actually know anything about it, because it intrigues me,
it tasks me. And this is the term beaver tail.
A beaver's tail, Am I am? I crazy? Or is
that associated with tornadoes? Now? This is a thing. It's
it's a smooth, flat cloud band that that extends again

(08:39):
in the northern hemisphere from the from the eastern edge
of the storm going out to the east or southeast
or eastern northeast. I'm sorry, um, and uh it It
also just suggests the presence of rotation. Got you. Yeah, So,
so in the storm systems, you have areas where there
is precipitation and you have areas where there's no precipitation.

(08:59):
I think the beaver's tail is in the no precipitation area.
So it's kind of one of the borders of these
storm systems. So if you see a storm system that
has several of these indicators, that's one of those those
warning signs to say this is the sort of situation
in which tornadoes can form. Right, all of these situations
can happen in completely benign, regular old thunderstorms, that nearly

(09:22):
terrify your dog. And uh, wall cloud is another one
that said, that's a cloud that seems like it's descending
from the bottom of the storm. Um, and those are
actually one of the more present that that's like your
ten to twenty minute warning if a tornado is going
to form. There, you've got about ten to twenty minutes
from when that's when that Yeah, that's that's scary stuff.

(09:44):
And so when this tornado is forming, you get an updraft,
all right, and that up dress sars to pull in
low level air from several miles around. I mean, we're
talking a huge system here, and that low level air
is pulled up through the updraft from the rain area,
and the rain cooled air is incredibly humid, like you
were saying, the moisture in the rain cool air quickly condenses,

(10:09):
and uh, that's why you get that wall cloud. And
then you know you know that they're the conditions are
ripe for a tornado to form. And then you've got
the rear flank down draft or RFD, and that's that's
this downward rush of air from from the back end
of the storm. That's a that's descending along with the

(10:29):
funnel Wow. Yeah, so this this looks like it's a
bright spot, right, that's what that's what this usually looks like.
It's usually to the rear, and in the northern hemisphere
it's the southwest side, which I think actually leads to
a wives tale. There's an old wives tale that if
you were to if a tornado is approaching and you
have a basement, you should go and huddle in the
southwest corner, the idea being that that would be the

(10:52):
safest way from the path of the tornado. But as
it turns out, tornado pathways are not nearly so predictable.
They are very unpredictable in fact. And um and and
also that that clear spot just doesn't have rain in it,
it's still actually a space of extreme wind activity. And
so yeah, then you've got the funnel itself, um and

(11:15):
which the visibility of a tornado will often depend upon
how much material is in it. Sometimes if usually if
it's if it's a little bit of material, that's when
it's it's most visible. That's when you can really see
the definition of the funnel cloud. If it's hits some
dust or something, right, right, if it's got some debris
in there, when it's got a lot. It makes it

(11:35):
hard to see because it just it looks like a
massive darkness coming at you. By the way, we'll probably
have some personal stories that we can relate a little
bit because Lauren and I have both experienced being through tornadoes. Um,
you know, I I grew up in Northeast Georgia and
I grew up in Ohio, and both areas have have

(11:56):
been the site of tornado activity. Granted, not nearly at
least in Northeast Georgia. It's not nearly to the same
extent as places in the Midwest that are in what
is called tornado Alley, but we still get quite a few. Yeah,
speaking of tornado Alley, the United States has, or North
America in general, has has the most tornadoes of any

(12:18):
place on the planet, about about twelve hundred per year UM.
And this is because of of what's called a dry line,
which is a center of cool, dry air that is
coming off of the deserts to the west and meeting
up with the warm, wet air from the oceans of
the east and causing all kinds of havoc right right, So,

(12:40):
you know, a lot of people will say that tornadoes
are kind of the result of cold Canadian air mixing
with the warm, moist air of the Caribbean. And then
the party gets together and the snowbirds come down and
the crazy steel drums come up, and then we have
a big old party in the form of tornado. And
any storm institute will tell you that's really simplification. That's

(13:04):
not really that thing. Tornadoes do occur in other parts
of the world. Absolutely, you find them in pretty much everywhere.
It's just that the frequency is much greater in the
United States. Sure, after the US, North America, I should say, yes,
after the US, Argentina and Bangladesh have the next two
highest proportions of tornadoes in per year. But but yeah,
they happen everywhere, right, So a lot of the conversation

(13:26):
we're going to have is again, and this comes as
a surprise to nobody who's been listening to tech stuff
for a long time, going to be very US centric.
But that kind of makes sense because North America does
play home to tornadoes. Get a pass in this particular instance.
Trusts us if you if you live in a place
that is very, very infrequently hit by tornadoes, just listen

(13:48):
and enjoy as we discuss the terrifying experience that we
have gone through as tornadoes have uh you know, rereaked
havoc in our homeland. Um. In fact, we can go
ahead and say this, we live in Atlanta right now. Um.
And Atlanta a few years ago was hit by some
by by a pretty massive tornado that did some major

(14:08):
damage in downtown went right through downtown Atlanta, which is unusual.
You don't frequently have tornadoes passed through metropolitan areas. And
in fact, there were some theories for a while that
the the island effect, the heat island effective of cities
might have something to do with tornado formation. But it
may just be that's the odds, you know, just one

(14:29):
of those things where it's kind of pretty small. Yeah,
when you when you when you're talking about the grand
scheme of things in the city is a tiny target
and when you talk about the entire United States. Um,
but yeah, one went through downtown Atlanta and there for
for months. There were major buildings in Atlanta that had

(14:49):
temporary covers over a lot of windows, like high rise building,
skyscraper buildings had these these temporary covers on their windows
because they had to start replacing all of them, some
of which are and buildings that have very um specific
types of surfaces, Like we have one hotel in downtown
Atlanta that's essentially a cylinders. It's beautiful, but it does

(15:12):
mean that replacing the glass is somewhat difficult. And there
were entire neighborhoods east of downtown that were just laid
to waste, including some lofts that had just been built.
They had been converted from old warehouses and old manufacturing plants. Yeah,
and they had just been converted into the hill offs
and then destroyed. Um that's all been rebuilt now, but

(15:36):
you know, it can hit major cities. We wanted to
talk a bit about the history of storm chasing and
just that I've got some about the history of weather
forecasting in general, just to kind of get an idea
of how we've come to the point where we're at now. Now, Lauren,
the very first date I have is eight forty nine.
Do you have anything before that? What? Yes? That was

(15:57):
the first first or corded account of a tornado. It
was sure as windy, elt there goes Johnny. It's the
village of Rosdala, Ireland. Um, sure as windy, there goes
all Shaughnessy and the the the account said that it
looked like a steeple of fire. Wow, that's poetic. We

(16:20):
usually say that there's a tornado's coming at us right now.
You hear that train of coming coming around the band? Um,
so four, do you have anything else before the smarty pants?
So in Professor Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian established a
network of weather instruments along telegraph companies. So he partnered

(16:43):
with telegraph companies and helped install these weather instruments at
their offices in various places around the United States. Uh.
And he used maps to coordinate between these these different
telegraph companies, and so the observations they sent back he
would end up note making notes on the map, and
then from that he would start to create weather predictions.

(17:04):
So that's some of the first weather forecasting in the
United States, beyond just the my knee is aching, it's
going to rain soon, or my dog is freaking out.
That's so he starts doing this. But there was a
little event in the United States that kind of disrupted
the whole project. That was called the Civil War. Yeah. Yeah,
that kind of ended up taking over the telegraph lines

(17:27):
for a while or mysterious reasons in eighteen sixty five. However,
after the conclusion of the Civil War, Professor Henry then
suggested that all meteorological observations reorganized under a single agency
as a means of predicting storms and warning coastal shipping.
So this was the very beginning of developing a national

(17:49):
bureau to oversee this and study it and make forecasts.
So eighteen seventy was when the United States formed the
Weather Bureau, and that's a year Congress established a National
Weather Warning Service under the Secretary of War. Now this
is going to get interesting because this particular office ended
up playing hop scotch with the various departments of government.

(18:11):
It started off under the Secretary of War mainly because
the military had the most advanced censors will not really
even censors at this point, but just communication lines. So
the military was put in charge of this. And also
it was a matter of national security in many cases,
so the Secretary of War oversaw this Weather Bureau department,
and the Army Signal Corps assumed responsibility for taking observations

(18:34):
at military installations and warning people of storms. Uh. About
twenty years later, in eight nine, the Weather Service Organic
Act transferred the Weather Reporting Services from the Secretary of
War to the Department of Agriculture. Would not be the
last time that it would jump ship. Meanwhile, in eighteen
seventy four, there's a report of John Mere crazy person,

(18:58):
climbing the top of a hundred foot hauled Douglas spruce
during a fierce windstorm and writing extensively about how really
cool it was. Storm chaser, storm chaser, early storm chaser.
Also in um in eighteen eighty four that August is
the first known photograph of a tornado taken UM, specifically
in South Dakota. Yeah, not from the inside. No. In

(19:21):
eighteen nineties six, that was when the first hurricane warning
service was established in the United States, And in nineteen
o nine, the Weather Bureau began a regular program of
balloon upper air observation. So this is sort of the
beginning of weather balloons. There had been some work with
it earlier, but this was the first time that the

(19:43):
Bureau itself had started to fund a weather balloon program.
And weather balloons are pretty much what they sound like.
They are balloons that carry some form of sensor, whether
it's just something to measure wind speed or humidity or
barometric pressure or whatever. And the and send either record
it and then you retreat the balloon and see what

(20:04):
the recordings were, or if it has some sort of
transfre modern ly, it will transmit back to a computer exactly, yeah,
or at least a radio station, so you'll get some
sort of report back on current atmospheric conditions and in
the upper atmosphere where you know, you can't just go
outside and say it's raining, you know, this is more

(20:24):
like what are the directions of of airflow at higher
elevation the temperature exactly. Uh. In n a Russian meteorologist
attached a radio mediocraft to a sounding balloon. Oh there's
some thunder out there, And that was the development of
what we consider the modern weather balloons. So the previous

(20:47):
weather balloons were kind of early attempts at using balloons
together more information. But this is when we're actually starting
to get information in real time radioed back very early
on still and by six that's when the Weather Bureau
began operation of weather balloons, collecting information such as atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity,

(21:07):
wind direction, and speed. So by six we're starting to
get a fairly robust weather reporting system. Uh. In ninety
the weather breh jumps ship again and becomes part of
the Department of Commerce, so once again playing hop scotch.
Which is which is where it still is today, I believe. Yeah,

(21:29):
although it's not the Weather Bureau anymore. We'll we'll talk
about that in the second right. Also circuit circer World
War two. Um, we started to see people flying into
hurricanes directly to study them. Yes, we call these crazy people, uh,
brave people who really were really were trying to advance science.
They were not doing this, you know, Willy nilly. This

(21:51):
was wow. There when that storm's coming right up on us,
it's hitting rant forest. Uh, it's a tornador. Um, it's not,
it's just a thunder storm. Hey guys, it's Jonathan here.
I got a storm rolling in. So I'm going to
take a quick break, but we'll be right back. Is

(22:16):
also when Roger Jensen started to become active, and he
is one of the people that we referred to as
an early storm chaser, right. I believe he chased his
first storm in nineteen fifty three with his father. That's
the date that I have. Oh yeah, I got I
just had. Nineteen forties was when he started. But it's

(22:38):
that was that was a very general kind of answer
from the site I was looking at a time, maybe
in fact more accurate and uh. Roger Jensen was was
a Turkey processing plant worker and farmer who got deeply
involved in the storm in the growing storm chasing movement.
He was, yeah, really one of the founders there, right,
another one being David Hold And you have some information

(23:01):
about him, right, Um. I think he began in nineteen
sixty five and following his his first experience there, he
chased storms just all the time. He was from False Church, Virginia. Yes,
and yeah, he was very much active in that, along
with another UM scientist of one of the first storm

(23:22):
chasing scientists, Neil Ward. Uh. Again in a very early
storm chaser. Meanwhile, while all this storm chasing is starting,
and it's just the earliest days of storm chasing. Back
in ninety eight, there was an Air Force captain who
later became a colonel named Robert Miller and also Major
Ernest Fawbush, who were the first on record in the

(23:46):
United States to successfully forecast a tornado. They actually forecasted
in central Oklahoma. They were observing conditions that were very
similar to a tornado that had hit the base four
days earlier, and they said, these conditions are ripe for
another tornado based on all that information, and so they
actually began to discuss with the higher ranked members of

(24:11):
the base there about whether or not they should take action. Ultimately,
they decided that they should prepare for the potential of
another tornado. So they acted as if another tornado was
going to hit. The next day, another tornado did hit
the base. That was two tornadoes that hit the very
same base within the span of five days, which was,
you know, pretty remarkable. I mean, you're talking about again,

(24:33):
a massive area, and for two tornadoes to hit the
same place within the span of a week is pretty rare.
But yeah, that was the first successful forecasting of a
tornado on record in the United States. UM and nine,
the Weather Bureau provoked a ban on mentioning tornadoes forecasts.
So you might wonder why was there a ban in place.

(24:55):
Why could not weather forecasters say, hey, conditions are right
for tornado. Here are the reasons. One, tornadoes at that time,
in particular, were largely mysterious forces that were just kind
of considered acts of God, that these were events that
would come down strike with incredible fury, things that would
say insight, large spread panic Exactly. The thought was that

(25:19):
you would do more harm than good by saying, hey,
there may be a tornado on the way, because no
one knew exactly what they were supposed to do. By
n fifty, they the Weather Bureau had decided that this
was no longer a responsible course of action, and that,
in fact, it would revoke that ban. By the way,
the band was not always a formal band. Sometimes it
was just highly discouraged from mentioning that conditions were right

(25:43):
for a tornado. But at this point they said that
that was no longer going to be an official policy.
Uh in uh, you had mentioned that earlier about the
storm chasers. That's also the same year when the Weather
Bureau changed. It's uh, well, there was a reorganization of
the Department of Commerce, and so that reorganization ended up

(26:06):
creating something called the Environmental Science and Services Administration, or SA,
and that organization changed the Weather Bureau to the National
Weather Service, which will sound a lot more familiar I
think to many of our listeners. Um. And in nineteen
seventy the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration formed and replaced SA.

(26:27):
So that's also known as Noah in o a A.
We got to see the headquarters of Noah. We we
visited Discovery headquarters up in Maryland right down the street. Yeah,
we saw Noah, and then people from Noah invited us
to go and see their stuff and talk to them,
which we are totally going to do as soon as
we can arrange it because that is mega awesome, cool,

(26:50):
really exciting. UM. Part part of what Noah was doing
in the nineteen seventies was establishing sky Warn, which is
a volunteer program that that currently certainly at the time
it did not have this money. It currently has like
two thousand trained volunteers working across the country. Is a
network to to observe and report storms. Yeah, in nineteen

(27:11):
seventy two, you had the first federally funded storm chasing program.
Where before we had storm chasers, but they were all
acting more or less on their own. They had, you know,
no official government backing, at least not from the federal level.
And now that had changed in nineteen seventy two, you
had a federally funded program. Uh, their first sampling of

(27:33):
a tornado wouldn't happen until nineteen seventy three in Oklahoma,
which as we know right there in the middle of
tornado Alley. Uh Now, I'm going to skip a whole
bunch of years here only to mention one of the
most famous programs in storm chasing, which is Vortex. Vortex
is an acronym. Of course, it stands for a Verification

(27:53):
of the Origin of Rotation in Tornadoes experiment. So the
E X and VORTEX is from X barriment that was
led by Eric Resmussen of Noah's National Severe Storms Laboratory
or in S. S. L UM And hey, I said
laboratory instead of laboratory. You did it. I didn't even
have to think about that time. Vortex, by the way,

(28:14):
was not the only program called that. There was a
second one, Vortex two, which launched in two thousand nine.
But there was an unusually quiet tornadoes season in two
thousand nine, which meant only one tornado was sampled that year.
It was sampled in Lagrange, Wyoming, but it was the
most intensively observed tornado at that time because there was

(28:36):
so much equipment present at that moment. In two, Vortex
to actually sampled quite a few super cells and a
few week tornadoes as well, and gathered a lot of information. Now,
during this span of time. There were a lot of
other UH storm chasers that were active right UM. During
during the nine seventies, UH David Hoadley founded storm Track magazine.

(28:59):
It was becoming that hobbyist movement that we were talking
about a little bit before. UM and and you know,
he was publishing articles in National Geographic and Scientific American UM.
There were programs on the History Channel in ABC. UM.
It was becoming very much in the public eye, especially
with the creation of these government agencies or the recreation
of these government agents. Yeah. Yeah, some of these agencies.

(29:21):
By the way, you know, we talked about it. You know,
the eighteen sixties, there were there was more than a
hundred years of information gathered. UH. And it's interesting that
it was kind of a you know, that chain was
never broken. It It did transform quite a few times,
but they remained like the information itself remained intact. And
it really wasn't until we started getting um uh you know,

(29:44):
small commercial or small non commercial vehicles, UM cars that
people could go out and drive around in too to
respond very quickly to the movement of a storm and
UM and furthermore, the UH you know, communication technology advancing
to the point where through through radio and the beginnings
of satellite and cell phones and etcetera, that we can

(30:05):
start to be responsive right right. In fact, we're gonna
talk some more about that technology, the stuff that storm
chasers use in order to track storms and to measure
their impact. We'll also talk about how we classify tornadoes,
which is an interesting story all on its own. But
before we get into all of that, let's take a
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(30:27):
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(30:50):
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you want that free book, this could be your first one.
It's the first in a series. It is called storm Front,
and it's the first book in the Dresden Files series
that's written by Jim Butcher. My wife is a huge
fan of the series. I am also a fan of
the series. It is narrated by James Marsters, who are
Buffy fans will recognize as spoke. Anyway, if you are

(31:14):
interested in fantasy and sort of a noir feel and
detective fiction, I highly recommend it check that out. Remember,
just go to audible podcast dot com slash tech stuff
to get that free audio book download of your choice. Alright,
so back to tornadoes. Let's talk about how we measure
how strong a tornado is. It's actually kind of an

(31:36):
interesting story. Yeah, there's a scale called the Fugita scale. Yeah,
the Fugita Pierson Tornado scale. Originally in its in its
first format, it ranged from F zero up to theoretically
F twelve. F twelve would have measured the wind speed
at mock one, which is the speed of sound. I
don't I don't like that idea. So well, uh, those

(32:00):
people would say that that to really think of the
scale and practical terms, you would go from F zero
to F six, the idea being that anything over F
six would have probably not we never would see wind
speeds at that intenscy. Hey, man, don't argue with me, thunder.
I'm just saying what I read. I really hope that's
actually coming through on the mic, because if not, we

(32:20):
sound really just crazy. Particularly so it's okay, there really
is thunder out there. You might not hear it, but
we do anyway. So the scale was proposed back in
ninete and it was proposed by Professor Fujita and Alan Pearson,
who was the director of the National Severe Storm Forecast
Center at that time. And it's kind of a weird

(32:43):
scale in the way. Um it's a scale that determines
the tornado's strength based upon the amount of damage it did, right,
And the problem being that, um, we've never really been
very good at measuring how powerful a tornado is at
the time, because first of all, they're pretty unpredictable. Second
of all, they have been very quickly and end very quickly.
And third of all, they're so powerful that our sentation

(33:05):
gets pretty banged up. Yeah it gets it gets jankie. Yeah,
you don't really end up with like a working sensor
after a tornado has finished playing with it in many
In many cases, so getting a tornado's wind speed while
the tornado is actually active is incredibly difficult. Like you said, Lauren,
we don't even know where they're going to form or

(33:25):
where they're going to go from and to that we
don't know what path they'll take. Um So getting an
accurate reading on wind speed while it's happening is really
hard to do, right. And of course we can tell
how fast they're traveling along the ground, how sure clouds
are going in relation to the ground due to Doppler radar. Yeah, yeah,
we can. We can track a tornado and say, all right,

(33:48):
the tornado itself traveled at a speed of sixteen miles
per hour from west to east, like we can say
that what's going on within it? It's very different, much
more mysterious. So Professor Fagitta and Alan Pearson came up
with a scale where they would look at the damage
that was left after a tornado had passed through and
said what speed of wind would be required in order

(34:10):
to do this amount of damage. In other words, we
were establishing how strong the tornado was after it had
already happened by just looking at the devastation that had left. Now,
the early scale was not terribly specific, and uh was
not really or maybe I should say not terribly precise.

(34:31):
There was an attempt to increase the precision and create
the enhanced Fujita Pearson scale. Yeah, every first two thousand
seven was when it was updated. We call e F
not just F. So if you ever hear like an
F five tornado, that's really using an outdated format. It's
really e F five what we would say now And

(34:52):
what does that translate to in terms that we mere
mortals can understand? Well, First of all, the way they
determine the scale is they look at the type of
damage that's done and to the type of structures or
landscape that it hits. So to really determine that, they
look at, you know, if you say that a building

(35:13):
was completely demolished, what was the type of building right now?
How is how is it built, how sturdy was it
in the first place, what materials went into making it exactly?
And then and then and there's this really complex fact
sheet that they have ranked out of different types of
buildings and feel like twenty eight or twenty nine different
designations for the type of building or landscape. And then

(35:34):
they numerical scale for how much damage was done to
from one day eight right, so eight being the greatest.
So if you had like a concrete steel reinforced building
and the devastation was at eight that was the most
unimaginably powerful tornado that could have possibly hit us. And
then here's the thing, there's no upper limit to this scale,

(35:55):
because there may be tornadoes that can destroy the strongest
stuff we build old, and since we're basing it on devastation,
you can't get more devastating than total loss. Right, So
if you have total loss, you essentially say that was
a really powerful tornado. You know, you can't get more
specific than that, because it could be that it's more
powerful than our scale would even indicate. But after you've

(36:19):
lost everything, that's kind of a moot point, right right,
which is basically what they're saying with a with a
e F five would be wind speeds over two hundred
miles an hour, yeah, which, yeah, you get into a
point where strong frame houses could be lifted into the
air and carried a considerable distance before it was dropped
again to oz for example. Yeah, So e F zero

(36:40):
would be the lowest. That's between sixty five miles per
hour winds. Then at e F one would be two
miles per hour. Two goes up to a hundred and
thirty five miles per hour, three goes up to a
hundred and sixty five four goes up to two hundred
and then anything over that. Yeah, five now, and in
the old scale you had up to F six really

(37:03):
was what was being described. And under that old scale
and F six tornado was called an inconceivable tornado. Was
it for real? Yes, that's amazing. I don't think that
tornado means what you think it means, um. But at
that point they said that the wind speeds were unlikely
to happen at that intensity that was described as three

(37:24):
D nineteen to three hundred and seventy nine miles per hour.
I think the highest on record is three I believe,
which is why would be the F six And that
the idea here was that you might not even be
able to tell that it was in F six tornado
because anything from F five would leave essentially total devastation

(37:45):
in its wake, right, so more total devastation, they said,
Essentially you would have to verify it by looking at
the evidence of the ground swirl pattern. Yeah, it's kind
of crazy. So the point being that it's about the
best we can do simply because again it's really hard
to get a read on a tornado while it's happening.

(38:07):
We really can only look at what happened afterward and say, well,
based upon this, we deduce the tornado was x strong.
You know. So with that in mind, what is the
kind of gear that we use for storm chasing and
measuring this kind of stuff? I mean, you've got your
basic weather uh sensors, things like a barometer, which reads

(38:30):
barometric pressure. In general, tornado's form after a drop in
air pressure, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a
sudden drop followed by a tornado. The drop can actually
happen several days before a tornado forms if there's a
low pressure system moving in on a broad scale. So
it's also very difficult to measure barometric pressure within a

(38:51):
tornado because the instruments very rarely survived. However, we will
talk about uh someone who did manage to do that.
That will be towards the end of our pot cast. Um.
Then there's the anemometer, right, there's there's blade and anemometers
and thermometers. And I had to I had to steady

(39:11):
myself to say anemometer, you did, you didn't? He took
a release afterwards, UM, And the analog blade ones are
if you've ever seen a like a spoked series of
arms or cups perched atop field cylinder. That's that is why. Yeah,
it's designed to measure wind speed. So if you've ever
seen one of those things, it looks like it's a

(39:32):
little pin wheel type thing, sometimes horizontally aligned with little
cups at the end of the arms. It's spinning around
in a circle. Uh. This does not tell us anything
about wind direction, but it does tell us about wind speed. Essentially,
you're talking about how quickly is this thing spinning, and
from that we can derive how how fast the wind
is blowing. It only really works at the wind is

(39:54):
blowing in a steady direction. If it starts blowing in
various directions, that can really mess with the readings. But um,
you know that that's how we kind of determine wind speed.
Of course, thermometers tell us things about temperature, uh, and
we can learn about humidity through various means. So getting
to the basic gears of storm chasers. A lot of
the basic gears the kind of stuff that you might

(40:14):
have at your disposal already, things like laptop computers, which WiFi,
digital cameras, video cameras that are both for video or
for still photography, radio's walkie talkies, ham CB anything that
they can get their hands on, police scanners, that kind
of stuff. Stuff that allows them to keep track of
the movement of weather systems. Uh, you know, anything that

(40:38):
will give them the most up to date, mediate communication
with anyone who is providing information about that storm. Right.
And then you know, the video cameras are obviously there
to document the actual storms, to watch their behavior, to
take footage, possibly to sell that footage later on, or
maybe it's just so that you can use it for
research purposes. Uh, it could be a combination purposes, journalists

(41:00):
purposes obviously. Yeah, and so those are those are your basic, uh,
pieces of equipment. There's some interesting approaches to studying tornadoes,
some of which are not necessarily used that frequently today.
Did you run into the term tornado photo grammy tree?
I did not photographm A tree is an older form

(41:21):
and we don't tend to use it as much because
it's not terribly precise. That's the use of film or
video to determine the speed of movement of some kind
of tracer element. So you take a tracer element as
a point of reference. This is not necessarily something that
you've introduced to the tornado. It may be something that
the tornado has already picked up, like I don't know,

(41:41):
a tractor, and it's usually a large piece of debris
of or some sort of persistent element in the cloud itself.
And from this you can start to infer what the
wind speed is with varying and sometimes unknown reliability. So
you analyze how the winds beat is by measuring the

(42:01):
movement of this this persistent element. You know, you're how
frequently is it coming around over and over? And from
that you can sit there and say, well, the wind
speed appears to be this. It was used more in
the nineteen seventies and the nine eighties, but we kind
of replace this with something that's far more reliable, namely
Doppler radar. Uh. In fact, we have Doppler radar that's mobile.

(42:25):
It's called Doppler on wheels or Dow Dow and Doppler
on wheels. Those are the main tools used in the
effort to determine the strength of tornado winds today. So
that raises the question what is Doppler radar and how
does that work? Well? The Doppler effect we we have
talked about on the show before. But it is the

(42:46):
effect of electromagnetic waves crunching up as something moves towards you,
right right. It's same thing with sound, right, So it's
not it's any kind of wave. If it's moving toward you,
the frequency of the way of increases because the object
is actually moving, uh, towards you. If it's moving away,
the frequency decreases. Those waves along gate. So in sound

(43:10):
and for once, it's amazing that we can't hear it
because whenever we record tech stuff there seems to always
be sirens going off in the background. But with sound,
like if a police car has its siren running and
it's coming towards you, you might hear a higher pitch
and then after it passes you, it goes to a
lower pitch. That's an example of the Doppler effect with
sound waves. Same thing is true with electromagnetic waves. And

(43:32):
radar uses electronomagnetic waves to kind of get an idea
of where other objects are. Radio waves right, um, it's
it will shoot a very quick like millisecond burst of
radio waves called a pulse, called a pulse out you know,
hopefully towards an object or sometimes just to see what's
out there. And um, and then it will measure the
length of time between when it's sent and when an

(43:54):
echo comes back, and we'll also measure the the the
Doppler effect, the phase is the phase of that of
that wave. So between the phase of the wave and
how long it took for the wave to return back
from the echo of the wave to return back, it
can determine the location and uh, whether or not something's
moving toward it or away from it. And in a

(44:15):
vague concept of how fast by kind of mathematically computing,
if you measure between pulses, you start to get an idea, Oh, well,
not only is it moving towards me, but it's moving
towards me at this general speed. So double on wheels
of course very useful because that means that you can
move the the the radar around so that you can
get a better idea of the speed of the storm

(44:36):
itself and even get an idea of the strength of
the tornado. Right. However, these these vehicles have to stay
between two and eight miles away from a tornado to
be effective, right, And it's mostly effective if it's encountering
stuff that is fairly large in the in the relative
scheme of things. So in other words, if there's precipitation,
that's great. That means that there's more stuff for the

(44:59):
radar waves to bounce off of, and that could be.
If it's larger range ups, that's even better. If it's hailstones,
that's fantastic because that gets a lot more for the Doppler.
For anyone who's caught underneath it, hailstones are terrible. You
do not want to be under them. But for for
the purposes of radar, it works really, really well. And

(45:19):
I think the strongest wind speed determined from a DOW
is at least from the data I was able to find.
Keep in mind, some of this data is several years
old because all of it comes from government sources and
reports can take a while and to become publicly available.
But the strongest I was able to find was three

(45:41):
hundred and two miles per hour. So I saw I
saw a report of one from Oklahoma in that that
that recorded the world record speed of three Okay, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah,
my my latest records are later than your latest. Rick.
Hey guys, Jonathan, again, storm has gone through. But now

(46:03):
I kind of have to go outside and pick up
some branches. So we're gonna take a quick break, but
we'll be right back. There's a specific type of radar
that has been used for some storm tracking technology. It's
called smart R, which is again yet another acronym, stands

(46:27):
for Shared Mobile Atmospheric Research and Teaching Radar. This is
one that is mainly used for research. It's used both
for hurricanes and for tornadoes and UM. So you know
that this combination of technology is used to really get
as much information about strength and speed as we possibly
can so that we can add to our body of knowledge. UM.

(46:49):
And then there's some private chase teams and tours that
have marine radars mounted on their vehicles. However, you should
know this is decoration. Marine radars are useless when it
comes to storm chasing and storm tracking. It's promotional purposes
only they're not used in research UM and actually marine

(47:10):
radar signals can interfere with research units like DOWS. So
don't do it. Storm chasing companies, don't put marine radar
on your trucks and then use them. Yeah, that's pretty silly.
There are some projects that have been very interesting but
not very successful. Uh. TOTO is one of my favorites.

(47:32):
TOTO standing for total BO Tornado Observatory now TOTO, of course,
is also obviously a reference to fantastic documentary about a
tourist from Kansas who visits an exotic land and kills
the one of the leaders of that land, two of them. Actually.
Total was developed by Dr Allen Bettard and Carl Ramsey

(47:56):
in ninety nine, first deployed by them in nineteen d one,
and basically it was an oil drum, like a fifty
five gallon oil drum with some stuff in it, with
some instruments in it. The idea that the tornado would
pick this drum up and we would gather the information
from the instruments inside, and hopefully the drum would protect

(48:17):
the instruments so that the information would be usable. Right, So,
how did that work out? Well? Um, it weighed four
hundred pounds, which is or so and so not actually
very well. I mean, first of all, you know they
were working in the early nine eighties when, uh we
did not have the kind of communication technology that would

(48:37):
allow people to really effectively chase storms. So it was
it was it was pretty much a crapshoot of whether
or not they would leave this thing in a place
that would were likely to get picked up. Keep in mind,
they don't have the benefit of a laptop with WiFi,
so they have radio. They could have radio, so they
could they could get radio updates, but without the ability

(49:00):
to actually track a storm on a computer and see
it and be able to anticipate where it's going to move,
it made it much more difficult to get to the
right place at the right time. Sure Also, it took
thirty seconds to deploy from the back of a of
a specially created truck um which is which sounds like
a short period of time, but but that is tremendously
long when a tornado is bearing down on you, yea,

(49:22):
or if you're anticipating a tornado, keep in mind we
were talking about that wall cloud, which was the indicator
that a tornado could touch down within ten to twenty minutes.
If it takes you half an hour to unpack your equipment,
just finding out where the tornado might touch down and
then getting the equipment out and set on the ground.
First of all, it may be too late, maybe that
the tornado has touched down while you were trying to

(49:42):
get your your equipment out, in which case you may
be in serious danger or things conditions could have changed
to the point where the place where you thought was
the perfect spot is no longer anywhere close to where
the tornado may touch down. So it was very difficult.
It as a surprise to no one. Was never really
picked up by a tornado. Uh No, it did it.

(50:03):
A tornado did run over it once in um when
the NSSL had had taken over for it, and um,
mostly the tornado just knocked it over and damaged the instruments.
Yeah so, but then it served as inspiration for another
fictional device, didn't, Yes, it did. Toto was the inspiration

(50:26):
for Dorothy, which was the fictional device in the film Twister. Yeah.
So the movie that made us believe that a cow
could be picked up by a tornado and still be
perfectly cow like, willing to move at any rate. Yeah,
and and not turned into hamburger. Um. Yeah it was. Uh.
Dorothy was the name of the device they wanted to

(50:48):
deploy in the film and try and get it in
the path of the tornado. It was inspired by the
real world analog Toto in in reality, Toto was scrapped
in ya um. But yeah. However, there are many other
instruments that have been created for similar purposes. UM. One
is called a turtle, which is a kind of hub

(51:10):
cap looking little devices that are They were debuted, I
believe in nineteen six, and we're we're on that beginning
edge of digital technology. They were not meant to be
picked up. They were actually designed as heavy, squat and aerodynamic,
the idea being that they could withstand the the wind
forces of a tornado so that you could retrieve them

(51:32):
and find out all the information you needed things like temperature, pressure, humidity,
and not just get picked up like the like total was.
It was just meant to be there so that you
can recover it afterward the tornado had passed through. There
are also snails which are similar in appearance, but are
outfitted with these seismic sensors because there was a theory

(51:52):
at some point that UM, if we can study the
vibrations that tornadoes create in the ground, it we would
be able to learn new fun stuff about them. Huh interesting,
I had not heard about that. UM also dellocams and
Observation zero O Z s ozes. Okay, I just I

(52:13):
just got that. I'm sorry, Dorothy Toto and OZ right UM,
which are which are camera equipment that that has been
designed to be put in the place, and I totally
forgot to write down there's also munchkins, because, as it
turns out, storm chasers get hungry and occasionally stop at
Dunkin Donuts and they just order a bunch of those
to eat while they're waiting. I just figured that we

(52:34):
might as well keep on going down this Wizard of
Oz route. So what about our vehicles? Yeah, okay, so
you're talking about the TIV. Yes, the Tornado intercept vehicle. Uh,
there's actually been a couple of these, um and in fact,
there well, tornado intercept vehicle is kind of a generic
name at this time. At this point, you're really talking
about any kind of reinforced vehicle, but specifically we're talking

(52:55):
about essentially, you take you take a pretty heavy vehicle,
one that's already pretty rugged, and then you turn it
into a reinforced possibly armor plated, uh possibly augmented vehicle,
something that looks like it came out of Mad Max. Yeah. Yeah,
you might be wondering, you know who rules Bartertown by
the time you see one of these things. Uh, they

(53:17):
are meant to withstand high wind speeds, hail, massive, massive trauma,
they're reinforced, and sometimes they have hydraulic panels that can
actually extend down to the sides of the vehicle. The
idea being that if you extend the hydraulic panel so
that it goes from the ground and and leaves no
space under the vehicle, then you can't have wind sweeping

(53:41):
underneath the vehicle and and lift it off or push
it off. It's it's perch um. Some of them even
have stabilizing jacks that will that will extend down and
into the ground and stable again, stabilize this so that
when heavy wind hits it, it doesn't rock over and
and tilt over and fall right um. The tip too

(54:03):
specifically was was was one that was created that wighed
about eight tons. Yeah, that's a pretty hefty vehicle and
also usually has has windows designed so that someone with
a camera can get as many different angles as possible.
The the the original was created by one Sean Casey,
who was an Imax cinematographer who was working towards some
some documentary pieces. I remember seeing bits from that. I

(54:25):
never got to see the full I assume they eventually
had a more, probably more than one documentary based on this,
but I do remember seeing excerpts of this, and they
were pretty fantastic. I also remember seeing at least one
clip where the crew was concerned that his desire to
get the best footage was possibly a little reckless. That's

(54:49):
probably the best way for me to put it. I
have no doubt that that that could be a thing
that could have happened. Well, what kind of information have
storm chasers gathered? Mainly we're talking about atmospheric conditions, things
like the rotation of the clouds, getting more information about that,
more information about the actual sequence of events that leads
up to tornado formation, the behavior of the tornadoes themselves,

(55:13):
the strength of the tornado. Uh, the you know, We've
got some information about barometric pressure, some things about temperature,
wind speeds and all this kind of stuff. Humidity. It's
really just trying to get as much data as possible
and sift through it to learn what is it that
really makes these things happen? Right, Because some of the

(55:33):
leading theories for a long time had a lot to
do with um with temperature differences, right up until we
got some data in from tornadoes that said that temperature
differences in in in airflow do not have to exist
for a tornado to be created, right, doesn't have that's
not not a not a necessary factor, right, and so
you know, it's it's it's kind of one of those

(55:54):
things where the more we learn, the more we realize
that we have to learn, and it is so difficult
to get good readings. Yeah, and we will come so dangerous. Yeah,
We're talking about such huge forces here that getting a
good reading is just, uh, it's risky and a lot
of the stuff we've developed just can't live up, can't
hold up to those kind of forces. It can, as
we said, be very financially viable. Um one war in

(56:17):
Fadely is a kind of rock star storm chaser whose
photos of storms can sell for over ten tho dollars
a piece. Yeah, yeah, which has inspired a lot of
people to try and follow in his footsteps. In fact,
that's one of the big controversies. And we can go
ahead and move into the controversy of storm chasing. One
of them is that with documentaries with reality television, I mean,

(56:41):
we do have storm chasers on Discovery. We've got or
we had I believe it was. It was ended in
two eleven. Yeah, So, but but there's been some controversy
that these sort of things have inspired lots and lots
of people to either pursue it as a hobby or
go into the tourism trade, that sort of stuff, and
that that self can add to the already significant danger

(57:05):
of storm chasing for research purposes or even as a profession,
especially considering the fact that if you've got if you
do have research professionals who are out there trying to
be safe, and you get in their way bad times
for everybody you can, you can cause traffic jams right
when people need to have an open escape route in
case the storm changes dramatically, and that can happen. Storm

(57:28):
storms can travel in one direction and then suddenly veer
off and you need to be nimble enough to be
able to respond to that. But if you've got a
line of cars behind you and that's the only way out,
then you're kind of stuck. It also means adding the
danger of first responders needing to get to locations after
a tornado has passed through. So it's one of those

(57:49):
things that has raised some concerns because legally speaking, there
are no rules or laws regarding storm chasing apart from
obeying traffic laws and things like trespassing. Clearly, you are
not supposed to trespass on people's property. You aren't supposed to, uh,
you know, drive the wrong way down the street, that
kind of stuff. But beyond that, there's not really anything.

(58:12):
You know, there's nothing illegal about storm chasing, but there
have been some discussions about that. UM and in we
had a tragedy in which three storm chasers, famous ones,
Tim Samaris, Paul samarrass Son and Carl Young. Uh, they
died in h an accident. They were caught in a

(58:33):
tornado near El Reno, Oklahoma. This was on May thirty
one and ending. They had been part of the Discovery
show storm Chasers and full full disclosure, full disclosure. We
are hastof works as a part company Discovery. Now we
should also say that that they were experienced storm chasers,
and they were. They were widely regarded as responsible members

(58:55):
of the community, and they had provided quite a bit
of scientific research. Absolutely. Tim in fact founded twist decks,
which which is similar to vortex. It's it's an acronym
for the tactical weather instrumented sampling in Tornado's experiment. Yeah,
he had an engineering background, uh, and he successfully deployed

(59:15):
a turtle that recorded the barometric pressure of two different tornadoes.
One in two thousand three recorded a barometric drop in
pressure of forty mill of bars, and another one another probe,
recorded a one d milli bar drop in a violent
tornado in South Dakota. UM Later on, other turtles would
record more baro metic pressure, but his was the first

(59:38):
one to do that. So he was really contributing to
the scientific knowledge of tornadoes. And so, uh, their deaths
were very tragic obviously, and also raised up a conversation
about is storm chasing something responsible? Is it okay? Should
should there be for other things, for for non human

(01:00:02):
ways to collect the stata? And and you know, it's
one of those things again where there's There's not been
any official movement as far as I'm aware, but people
like the Kansas Emergency Management Association president Brian Stone said
it was worth looking into establishing at least some rules
to guide storm chasers, if not formal laws, at least

(01:00:24):
uh kind of a code really that storm chasers need
to follow. Now, keep in mind, Tim Samaris and his
crew were experts, I mean they were they were known
for being very safety conscious. So this really shows how unpredictable.
These storms can be and even if you are at
the top of your game and you are very careful,

(01:00:47):
tragedy can strike. Yeah, supposedly the storm that that they
were killed and killed another ten people out in Oklahoma
and supposedly had one of those very quick turns that
no one could have predicted. They probably blocked their escape routes.
And the National Weather Service does not endorse storm chasing
because of the risk involved. However, they do welcome the

(01:01:09):
reports that storm chasers bring in. So it's kind of,
you know, it's one of those things where they say, yeah,
we can't we can't say go out and be a
storm chaser, but we will say that the data we
get is invaluable. Yes, we can't put a price tag
on that because it's it's helping us understand these systems
and that's really the best way we know of doing it.

(01:01:31):
And through sky Warn. In fact, they will conduct spot
or training classes across the United States if you're if
you are very interested in storm chasing, I would recommend
not probably going on one of the tours. I don't
think they're necessarily responsible, but um, you can't. You know,
some may be very good at following safety rules and

(01:01:52):
some maybe a little more lax in that. It's hard
to say. It's hard to say, but but Sky Warren
will will try. Yeah, you can do it. You can
do this in the most responsible and safe way possible,
which is that's the best thing. I mean, this is
your passion, and this is you want to contribute to
the scientific knowledge. I mean, I find that admirable. I

(01:02:14):
personally also think it's crazy because I I've know well well,
like I said, Lauren, and I can talk a little
bit about our experience living through tornadoes. Uh, and I
would never ever ever want to invite that experience on
me again if I can avoid it. What what? What?
What did happen? Okay, all right, well I can talk
about that. So. I grew up in northeast Georgia, near

(01:02:35):
a city called Gainesville, which actually has a history of
tornado problems. There was a tornado that moved through early
in the twentieth century and laid the city to waste.
I mean, it completely destroyed Gainesville. My grandfather worked in
a textile mill in New Holland, Georgia, which is just
outside of Gainesville. And uh, he tells or he told

(01:02:57):
the story he's passed on now, but he told a
story about how working in the mill he was, you know,
the tornado was bearing down the mill and he was
moving toward the staircase to get down to a safe level,
and as he was hitting the staircase, the roof of
the building ripped off because of this tornado, the force
of this wind. And uh, this was the same tornado

(01:03:18):
that essentially leveled the city. When I was growing up,
we had several tornadoes passed over the area of town
I lived in, which is called Oakwood, Georgia. I grew
up there, and I can remember like there were there
were houses that were within just a very short walk,
like you just walked up a hill and you could

(01:03:38):
see them that were completely leveled by tornadoes on a
couple of occasions. And I mean I remember huddling with
my family at the base of our house, Um, not
even sure if our house was going to be hit
by these things. And uh, we had tornadoes passed directly
over us where you know, sometimes a tornado will touch

(01:04:00):
down and then lift up and touched down again. In fact,
there's even an argument about whether or not that counts
as two separate tornadoes or the same one we've had
that happened where a tornado went directly over our house,
where it lifted up and then set back down a
little bit further out. So um, you know, as a kid,
that was definitely like that was a life defining experience,

(01:04:21):
to the point where I had trouble with storms for
a while after I was after that. These days storms
don't bother me so much. I can. I can handle
that just fine. But if it starts turning like ominous,
if I start noticing those little warning signs, I take cover,
because it is serious business. I mean, it is absolutely
terrifying to live through. Sure, yeah, I am. My My

(01:04:45):
experience is a lot more spotty than that. I remember
being maybe maybe about five years old, and my my
mother and U are extremely dedicated black Labrador retriever UM
hurting me down into the basement and U. But I
think that mostly by the time we got there, like
by the time we heard about it and got down there,

(01:05:06):
the radio is already calling it off. So um. And
and this is the to the two types of warnings
that you may have heard of and had a tiny
bit of confusion about, because I don't feel like they're
very well publicized the differences between them all the time.
Tornado watch is issued by the n o A a
UH Storm Prediction Center meteorologists and and they are watching

(01:05:28):
the entire United States all the time. UM. Tornado warning, however,
is issued by a local n o A a UH
National Weather Service forecast office who is watching your designated
area all the time and UH the warning indicates that
there are spotters who have seen a touchdown and that

(01:05:50):
you need to get to safety. The the watch is
more that there are conditions that are favorable for a tornado.
Tornado could could form under such conditions. Yeah, I've I've
seen so many of both. UM. It's one of the
one of the risks of living in the Southeast United States,

(01:06:10):
not again, not nearly as prone to tornadoes as other
parts in the nation, which can get them even more
regularly than we do. And I thought i'd close out.
This is something that another storm chaser had said about
the situation with with Tim Samaras and his son Paul
and Carl Young. His name is Renny vander Wedge, and

(01:06:30):
I apologize if I have butchered that name, but he
had this to say, and I thought it was interesting.
And there's actually quite a bit that he has written
about the storm chasing in general. But I thought this,
this really bears attention in our podcast, So he said.
Many storm chasers do a lot of good. Some are
researchers trying to understand why some storms produced tornadoes and

(01:06:50):
others do not. Tim Samaras, for example, combined his background
and engineering and whether to invent devices for measuring conditions
inside a tornado. His research has been value able. Other
researchers use mobile radar units to measure precipitation and wind
inside a tornado from close range to gain a better
understanding of how tornadoes develop. Other chasers are simply out

(01:07:11):
there for the thrill of chasing, or to capture video
to sell to media outlets. But as tornado video has
become plentiful on YouTube and other websites, chasers have had
to get closer than ever to get the kind of
footage that will earn them a paycheck. They often find
themselves in the bears cage, which is chaser lingo for
the part of the storm where tornado forms. Some have

(01:07:32):
built vehicles to drive directly into a twister. This carries
enormous risk. Now, he teaches meteorology and bring students with
him on trips where they they observe these stormfronts and
the weather conditions, so that the meteorologists have direct experience
with this before they go on to whatever their careers are.

(01:07:54):
But I thought it was really interesting to have a
professional opinion added in there, because of course, like we
said at the very top of the show, this is
and we've repeated several times, this is serious, dangerous business. Uh.
It's not something for just a casual attempt. You know,
you definitely want experienced people around you. If you are
interested in the field, that's amazing, but definitely seek out

(01:08:18):
training and make sure that you're following this as as
many safety procedures as you can because this is this
is deadly stuff. And that wraps up this classic episode
of tech Stuff. Hope you guys enjoyed it. If you
have any suggestions for future topics of tech Stuff, go
ahead and reach out to me on Twitter or Facebook.
The handle for both of those is tech Stuff hs

(01:08:40):
W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
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