What was Project VORTEX?
That was the acronym for Verification of the Origin of Rotation in Tornadoes EXperiment, conducted in the springs of 1994 and 1995 in the southern and central U.S. plains, and led by Erik Rasmussen of NSSL. The basic idea was to gather the most dense possible set of observations in tornadic supercells, from sensors in cars, planes, balloons, “turtles” (small instrument packages which could be placed on the ground), and portable radars. The main goal is to better understand the cause of tornado formation in thunderstorms. Subsequent, smaller field measurement programs were conducted under the name SubVORTEX. For more details on VORTEX, go to the online VORTEX storybook page.
