Tornado Intercept Vehicle - GIF

Tornado Intercept Vehicle.

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Previously:

Car sucked by tornado - GIF
Fire tornado sucks up fire hose - GIF
Historical map of tornadoes in the U.S. - photo
Tornado rips through town - GIF
Tractor working with tornado in background - GIF
Train vs. tornado - video

What sort of legitimately USEFUL information can be obtained from the interior of a tornado? "Stormchasing" seems to be more of a redneck form of entertainment rather than a legitimate scientific effort.

Mad Max beyond the tornado zone

I think there is useful data to be gathered from inside a tornado using sensors, not people. This vehicle is a joke. Those little posts driven into the ground are no match for a tornado. A tornado can lift a freight train.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOtable_Tornado_Observatory

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rgsparber

I think there is useful data to be gathered from inside a tornado using sensors, not people. This vehicle is a joke. Those little posts driven into the ground are no match for a tornado. A tornado can lift a freight train....

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I agree about using sensors rather than people. (A main reason for foregoing a manned mission to Mars. (Unless only politicians and lawyers are sent.)) The problem is that we can't accurately predict the path of the storm so deploying and nailing down the sensors is problematic.

But what is the real use of that data ? Tornadoes are basically random in the sense that knowing in detail the path/pressure distribution/temperature/etc. doesn't tell you much of anything to predict the path of the next one. Our government has already collected mountains of data from space probes that sits, mostly uninspected, in vaults until someone really needs to calculate the average size of pebbles on Mars. I think a lot of the tornado data already collected is in the same category.

There is more to the data than predicting the path. Sensors improve over time and all tornadoes are not the same. I’m sure there is a lot of data waiting to be analyzed but maybe the people to do this work haven’t even been born yet. More data is always good.

I have lived through two tornadoes. One killed 37 people. They are a life changing event that I wish I knew more about, from a distance. They can drive. 2x4 down a tree’s center, pulverize a brick building, and derail a freight train. Yet we know little about what makes them tick.