Student storm chasers find course research to be excellent adventure
By Lynn Davis, College of Natural Resources
Most people in the vicinity of tornados and other potentially severe storms eagerly seek immediate shelter. However, for the students of a Virginia Tech geography special studies course, the first-hand observation of a tornado provides an excellent opportunity to see how a storm forms and impacts the landscape. The geography course teaches students how to forecast, intercept, and analyze severe and potentially tornadic thunderstorms.
Instructor Dave Carroll, who also teaches earth science at nearby Pulaski County High School, leads a two-van caravan equipped with weather instrumentation, wireless Internet, global positioning system (GPS) units, CB and ham radios, and other types of communication equipment to stay informed of local weather changes.
In addition, the team has storm-tracking back-up lab support from the National Weather Service office in Blacksburg, Va., and the meteorology department at WDBJ-7, the Roanoke, Va., CBS affiliate.
In 2007, the Virginia Tech students were accompanied by two meteorology students from the University of North Carolina at Asheville and two Pulaski County High School students.
Carroll has been taking interested high school and college students on storm-chasing excursions since 2003. Trips often cover more than 6,000 miles and can range from North Carolina to Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Colorado.
Identifying a tornado isn’t as easy as it appears in the movies. As storm chase co-leader and weather journalist Kevin Myatt of The Roanoke Times wrote in his column, “If it were like the movies ... there would always be a picturesque funnel connecting cloud to ground, swirling dust, debris, cows, Kansas teenagers, and their little dogs.”
The entire crew met each morning to discuss forecast parameters and potential areas of severe thunderstorm development. They identified a broad region, comprising perhaps one-fourth of a state, where they believed that severe/tornadic activity would occur later in the day. Then the students conducted the on-road weather analysis and radar operation, as well as all navigation to the storm intercept points, constantly monitoring dangerous locations where large hail — up to softball size -- flooding rainfall, and damaging winds (to 80 mph) were located. Data and observations were constantly exchanged between vans via two-way radio in the near-storm environment.
In central Illinois, the storm chasers intercepted a tornado-warned super cell and witnessed several funnel clouds extending below three major wall clouds, which typically spawn tornados. In southeast South Dakota and northeast Colorado, the team saw several swirls of dust created by a thunderstorm’s forward outflow known as “gustnadoes.” These formations were reported as tornados by local storm spotters due to the circulation observed in the clouds above.
“Right now the chase is mainly centered on the educational aspect,” says Carroll. “In the future, we will also tackle more research-oriented tasks as attempts to model storms will need data sets from the near-storm environment, especially when working with the geography department where GIS applications can help in the analysis of surface-atmosphere interactions on a very fine scale.”
The storm chasers have been supplying field data, photos, and videos to the National Weather Service so that they can correlate the field data with what they are seeing, Carroll says. “In spring 2006, for example, the team provided the weather service in Raleigh, N.C., with video and photos of a supercell thunderstorm and tornado in north central North Carolina, which confirmed the tornado warning that was issued for that storm,” Carroll says. The team’s footage has also been used in scientific post-storm conferences and analysis.
The 2007 geography field course tested new mobile Wi-Fi hotspot technology in order to determine its efficiency in obtaining weather data, satellite and radar information in the field.
“As the geography department moves toward adding a meteorology degree program, it is hoped that field experience and research opportunities can be expanded to include even more students annually,” Carroll says.
Next year, the field course will be working with the National Geographic Society’s Jason Project, “Monster Storms,” along with PBS, Carroll reports. “In addition to a severe storm curriculum that is produced for public schools, the Jason Project will track us live online via GPS and even potentially mobile web cams. A videographer will accompany the Virginia Tech geography team, along with a select group of National Geographic Jason Project ‘Argonauts’ — high school students who have been accepted for field work after a rigorous application process.”
Students who want to continue to contribute to knowledge about storms take advantage of research opportunities at the NOAA National Weather Service Forecast Office in Blacksburg. Virginia Tech student volunteers are working on a study of the climatology of thunderstorms moving through the central Appalachians from west to east and a study correlating local radar parameters with severe weather reports with a focus on large hail.
“Our main mission is to protect lives and property from dangerous weather. We are an operational weather facility, but doing even this limited applied research can help us improve our ability to achieve our mission,” says Stephen Keighton, meteorologist and science and operations officer at the Blacksburg NOAA office.
