Fourteen minutes with a research storm chase team, from deployment to the last probe

A research chase looks nothing like the version on television. There is very little driving toward a storm and a great deal of driving parallel to one, arguing about whether the next paved road runs the right way.

This film follows a university team through a single deployment: the morning target forecast, the drive, eight instrument probes placed on a gravel road ahead of a developing supercell, and the retreat.

The road network decides everything

The team’s constraint is not the storm. It is that instruments must be placed in the storm’s path, on a road, with an exit that does not require crossing the path.

In much of the plains the road grid runs north-south and east-west on a one-mile spacing, which is either perfect or useless depending on the storm’s motion vector. The film includes the moment the team abandons a planned deployment because the only road into position has no way out.

We are not brave. We are extremely careful about where the exit is, and we leave before it gets interesting.— The team’s field coordinator, at 08:20

What they recovered

Of eight probes deployed, two were in the path and returned usable pressure, temperature and wind data. Three were missed entirely as the storm turned right. Two were recovered undamaged outside the path. One was not found.

A two-in-eight rate is described by the team as a good day.

• Runtime: 14 minutes 8 seconds
• Probes deployed: eight; two returned usable data; one not recovered
• Constraint: instrument placement is limited by the road grid, not by visibility
• Abandoned deployment: at 06:15, for lack of an exit route

The data from deployments like this one feeds the models that produce tornado warnings. The team’s principal investigator notes in the closing section that near-surface measurements remain the largest gap in the observational record, because that is precisely where instruments are hardest to place and easiest to lose.