Dateline: May 28, 2009

Weather-watchers descend on Clarendon

By Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise  

Clarendon was abuzz Monday when more than 100 weather-watchers descended upon the community.

Dozens of specialized vehicles sporting radar and other equipment lined up at the roadside park at US 287 and SH 70 during the day, before they caravanned down the highway late in the afternoon.

Paul Markowski with the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) told the Enterprise that the diverse group was collecting data on thunderstorms and said they were headed to Estelline where they were hoping to see a big storm. He said the group chases storms in the plains between Canada and Mexico.

The group was part of the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2 (VORTEX2), which is the most ambitious field experiment in history to explore tornadoes.

According to the NSSL’s website, scientists and students from sixteen different universities, and various other academic organizations in the United States are expected to take part in the experiment. VORTEX2 will also involve forecasters from the NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) forecast offices, the NOAA Storm Prediction Center, Environment Canada, the Australia Bureau of Meteorology, and Finland.

The project is being conducted between May 10 and June 13 and employs more than 50 scientists and 40 research vehicles, including 10 mobile radars, a press release said.

“Data collected from V2 will help researchers understand how tornadoes form and how the large-scale environment of thunderstorms is related to tornado formation,” according to Louis Wicker, research meteorologist with NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory and V2 co-principal investigator.

Scientists are sampling the environment of supercell thunderstorms - violent thunderstorms capable of producing damaging winds, large hail, and tornadoes - that form over more than 900 miles of the central Great Plains. Areas of focus include southern South Dakota, western Iowa, eastern Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, the Texas Panhandle, and western Oklahoma. The V2 Operations Center will be at the National Weather Center in Norman, Okla.

Preliminary results from V2 are scheduled for presentation at Penn State University during fall 2009. At that time, organizers will begin planning details of the second phase of V2 scheduled for May 1 - June 15, 2010.

The VORTEX2 teams seek to understand how, when, and why tornadoes form. Answers to these questions should help increase warning times for those in the path of these deadly storms.