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The more we know about what happens on the ground in a tornado, the more effectively engineers can design structures and meteorologists can make forecasts and issue warnings.
Severe storm researchers, sometimes called stormchasers, track down tornadoes to record information about their wind speeds, air pressure, humidity, temperature, and wind direction—information that can be used to make people safer.
Inside a Tornado
At 2:23 p.m. on June 11, 2004, severe storms researcher Tim Samaras captured something on video no one ever had before: the inside of a tornado. Samaras had designed a special “probe” outfitted with cameras and an audio recorder and built to stay put in a twister. Along with two colleagues, he chased down a tornado near Storm Lake, Iowa and placed the probe directly in its path.
Catching the inside of a roaring twister on video may sound exciting (or crazy), but it isn’t for thrills. By analyzing the video frame-by-frame, researchers can do something never successfully done before: calculate wind speeds in the bottom 30 feet of a tornado, where the damage happens.
 The Tornado Warning System
Tim Samaras’s work builds on that of other researchers who have studied tornadoes to help make people safer. One of the first is Howard Bluestein, who began using Doppler radar in the 1970s and ‘80s to look inside a storm for signs of rotation.
This research is the basis of the system of tornado watches and warnings now in use to alert the public to danger. A tornado watch means thunderstorm conditions exist that could spawn tornadoes. A warning means a twister has touched down and been spotted.
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