by Morton, Texas (AP) – Even if mother becomes bad, the weather extreme is a feeling of fantastic beauty. About 60 scientists in spring and early summer went directly to hailstorms to better understand what it makes to crack and learn how to reduce the annual damage of $ 10 billion in the United States per year.
When three Associated Press colleagues joined the scientists for several days, they found more than just hail, heavy winds, rain and science by storm. They found breathtaking sights and noises.
One person who is commissioned to protect others
If there are dozens of scientists-many of them are student-high-tech radar, weather balloons, hail collection devices and storms, which sometimes have tornadoes, someone has to make sure that everything is going well and nobody is injured. In the first weeks of the ICECHIP project, that someone was Victor Gensini, meteorology professor of Northern Illinois University and one of the main scientists in the Hagon team.
Gensini and his handpicked students all led how chess stones called a computer program called Guru in his command vehicle. But he couldn’t just lean back on the SUV and let others have fun. He would drive near the storm, not close enough to have the car damaged because, unlike Husky Hagel, he had no protective network above the windshield. But he would get closer enough to study, study directly and only look at storms that would take over the horizon in Texas Panhandle and near Oklahoma and New Mexico.
The clouds themselves tell the story of a confusing atmosphere. Sometimes dark and dangerous, sometimes they are bright with visible vertical stripes that indicate. And then a large plump tornado can form and inspire fear.
There are little twister who can form and turn out just as dangerous. And finally, if you are lucky, there are one or two rainbow. One afternoon in the Texas Panhandle, the hail hunting team was able to see a double rainbow and a swirling twister who did not quite reach the ground.
The clouds are not only beautiful over the vast levels. If you drive a building like the mascot of Hollis Tigers in Hollis, Texas, the Hollis Tigers mascot, combine to look threatening and strong.
Two teams are working on collecting data before storming
Two teams, the red and the black teams, try to reach the storm to see how it develops. They solve wind balloons with instruments and GPS persecution, the moisture, wind speed and measure.
The inflation of weather balloons is not an easy task. As a gind, the students have to inflate the balloon, tie it together and connect the instrument panel that is sealed with a lid in a disposable coffee cup. Then it is time to release the weather balloons. It is a two-person job in which one holds the cup of instruments and the others the balloon.
Leaving weather balloons doesn’t just let her go. It has to be carried out with some care – usually a “one, two, three” and released -, since the instrument cup could otherwise hit the balloon holder when a reporter from Associated Press almost found out on the hard tour. After publication, the balloons can fly up to 60,000 feet or more. Or you can never go completely off the ground when a tiny hole in the balloon.
It is also time to be a gawk and scientist. The black team members Evelynn Mantia and Olivena Carlisle, both of Niu, take photos of a approaching storm that they have monitored. And as soon as they are finished, it is their job to fall back a little and then collect hail that has fallen.
A storm strikes and forces a team to take cover
The Red Team also publishes weather balloons to be one step ahead of the storm and then collect hailstones. But the three students can also go into the storms a little. Before the storm, Ethan Mok and Wyatt Ficek release their balloon.
In the first days of the ICECHIP campaign, the red team acquired a call to drive the envelope. And that late afternoon until early evening in New Mexico, the team with Mok at the wheel showed why.
After releasing their balloons, they went into the storm when the sky got darker. The rain came down. Wind began to blow. They drove to take some pictures of the storm that took over the horizon. Since they did it, a semi -truck raced down the street into the storm. Mok and the team members laughed and said that the truck had to turn around.
The red team would not turn around. Photos taken, they drove into the storm like the truck. The sky became even darker. Wind and rain. Visibility of the windshield disappeared. Mok finally pulled off the tiny road a bit reluctantly. They watched the Semitruck came back and tried to flee from the storm. They pulled the vehicle. They stared at weather radar and outside.
Gensini Katie Wargowsky Rady Student, who will bring her to safety, had Gensini Katie. Mok got in quickly and tried to walk south and around the storm and go back to the Chasers’ hotel.
The storm had other ideas. It overtook the red team. Hail came down. Wind whipped. Visibility was gone. Wargowsky sparkled so that they went to a petrol station out of security. Mok said he wished he could, but the street section was remote and there were no petrol stations for the cover. He had to go through and finally made it to a fast food drive thru as a reward.
Scientists Hagel -Chaser see how others storm into storms
Since the film “Twister”, Storm Chasing has passed from a scientific persecution to an adrenaline, tourist pastime in social media. When the scientific team of hailagers followed a massive storm system near Morton, Texas, after the car after the car of the storm rider, some with creative license plates that were passed by.
Sometimes storm hunters overlooked the street side, cameras ready. Gensini, the ICECHIP Operations Chief project, often had to be careful to be too vigilant to drive the Tornado chaser too vigilant. They could be just as endangered as the storms themselves, warned Gensini.
Tony Illende drives Husky Hagel Hunger, one of the main vehicles of the team that goes straight into the storms. It has a network above the windshield to protect it from a torn.
Illende is careful with a helmet on his head to make sure that he is not cracked in hail when he runs out in the storm. Sometimes it comes terribly close. And as soon as it came too tight, it hit its unprotected hand, which swelled for a few days and was then better.
Collecting hail is an essential part of science. Researchers who wear gloves so as not to warm up the ice balls, absorb the hail, put them in pockets and then put them in coolers. Then they are crushed, cut, measured, weighed and examined in other ways.
When the red levels expand, a storm in its sheer splendor forms a strangely looking hole in the clouds. It is a signal of danger.
The lower cloud is the wall cloud where energy and moisture flow. The cloud then forms lower. The empty space is the dangerous rear flank downdraft, which is cooler air, which presses down with great strength and is wrapped around the back of the wall cloud, Team forecast said David Imy.
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