VORTEX2 (V2) chasing Killing Tornadoes across Midwest U.S.
_______________________________________________________________
Here is the article:
Relevant Video:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/05/14/vortex2.tornado.chasers/index.html#cnnSTCVideo
Some Photos:
What is VORTEX2?
VORTEX2 (V2 for short) is the largest organization and spends the most effort made to understand tornadoes. There are over 100 scientists and up to 40 science and support vehicles.
What Happened?
There were huge and powerful storm tearing through the Midwestern states in U.S. on Wednesday and there are three deaths resulted. So Vortex2 is risking there own lives trying to get near the tornadoes and study small and big details about them, including:
- How, when, and why do tornadoes form? Why some are fierce and very long-lasting while others are weak and short lived?
- What is the structure of tornadoes? How strong are the winds near the ground? How exactly do they do damage?
- How can we learn to forecast tornadoes better? Current warnings have an only 13 minute average lead time and a 70% false alarm rate. Can we make warnings more accurate? Can we warn 30, 45, 60 minutes ahead?
Will there be any Impact?
Yes, well the tornado disaster is a great impact, people became homeless and lost everything. But VORTEX2 went there and did a research about tornadoes, so if we can know more about these killing tornadoes, it would be easier to prevent innocent deaths and lost. This research is important as long as there are still tornadoes because we should avoid any more of these unalarmed tornadoes.
My Reflection
I think this issue will not affect me or any people who lives in Hong Kong directly because we are very fortunate and don't have any disaster here yet, but as we grow older and we have to be very independent. We will need to prevent this happening, so I think that this research is very important to the present and the future generation.
No comments:
Post a Comment