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Twister: Decentralized Twitter Alternative Built with Code from Bitcoin/BitTorrent, Lavabit Encryption Scheme, No IP Recording

Tornado Tech: How Drones Can Help With Twister Science

Tornado researchers want to use small drones, like this one called the Noctura, to study the storms.

Andy Arena/Oklahoma State University

Oklahoma was hit particularly hard by two massive outbreaks this year in what’s been another deadly season of tornadoes in the U.S. Despite technology and forecasting improvements, scientists still have plenty to learn about how and why tornadoes form.

Currently, one of the best ways for researchers to understand how tornadoes form is to chase them. So off they go with mobile science laboratories, rushing toward storms armed with research equipment and weather-sensing probes.

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It’s dangerous work. Three chasers died in one of Oklahoma’s May tornadoes because the storm unexpectedly changed directions. And there’s also a lot left to chance — only 20 percent of supercell thunderstorms produce tornadoes.

“It’s a loaded gun,” says Jamey Jacob, an aerospace engineering professor at Oklahoma State University, of the big weather systems. “It’s ready to go off, but when and where does it fire?”

One of the downsides of the current tornado research method is that it’s passive, Jacob says. “You throw [probes] out there [and] you hope something gets caught up [in the storm] somewhere,” he says.

So he and dozens of other scientists and engineers are remaking tornado technology. They’re looking to small drone aircraft loaded with sensors that can be launched from the trunk of a car, far from a potential tornado.

“With unmanned aircraft,” Jacob says, “you fly it where you want it to go.”

If you open up these drones, the contents could have come from a middle school science project. But the Kevlar shell and the tiny sensors are fit for a high-tech military plane.

Brian Argrow directs the research and engineering center for unmanned aerial vehicles at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

“Being able to sample the pressure, temperature, humidity, wind velocity — that you can’t do remotely,” he says. “Radar can only do so much at this point.”

Scientists think these drones can help them increase warning time from the current 14-minute average to as much as an hour. Argrow says the technology exists, and the planes are ready to go, but many of them are stuck in university laboratories, frustrating researchers.

Drones can provide information about temperature, humidity and pressure that current radar systems can’t provide. Above, the Talos drone, which has a 15.5-foot wingspan.

Jamey Jacob/Oklahoma State University

“It’s often that technology gets ahead of policy, particularly in this country, and this is an instance where that essentially has happened,” he says. “Some of the technology — the capability, anyway — has gotten ahead of what the current air traffic system is able to accommodate directly.”

The Federal Aviation Administration declined to be interviewed for this story, but Argrow and his team started working with the agency in 2009 to integrate the new storm-chasing technology into the nation’s airspace. They were able to fly into a few storms back then. But it’s a very slow, bureaucratic process that doesn’t mesh well with fast-developing thunderstorms.

Scientists think if new policies are put in place, these aerial chasers could be widely operational in five years, allowing meteorologists to make more accurate tornado warnings.

News

Tornado Tech: How Drones Can Help With Twister Science

New school year awaits kids who survived twister

AAA  Aug. 16, 2013 3:09 AM ET
New school year awaits kids who survived twister
By SEAN MURPHYBy SEAN MURPHY, Associated Press  

In this Monday, May 20, 2013 photo, Cameron Richardson, center, is carried out of the rubble of Plaza Towers Elementary school in Moore, Okla. When school begins again Friday, Aug. 16, 2013, Plaza Towers students will go to a renovated building on the junior high campus. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

In this Monday, May 20, 2013 photo, Cameron Richardson, center, is carried out of the rubble of Plaza Towers Elementary school in Moore, Okla. When school begins again Friday, Aug. 16, 2013, Plaza Towers students will go to a renovated building on the junior high campus. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

In this Saturday, Aug. 3, 2013 photo, Cameron Richardson, right, who was trapped in the rubble of Plaza Towers Elementary school following the May 20, 2013 tornado, poses for a photo with his brothers, Anthony Richardson, 3, center, and Davion Richardson, 13, in their yard in Moore, Okla. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

In this Monday, July 29, 2013 photo, Ruby Macias, 9, center, who was pulled from the rubble of Plaza Towers Elementary School in the May 20, 2013 tornado, swings on a tire swing with her sister, Aylin, 4, left, and brother Angel, 7. Angel was also at the school on the day of the tornado. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

FILE – In this Monday, May 20, 2013 file photo, Kai Heuangpraseuth is pulled from beneath a collapsed wall at the Plaza Towers Elementary School following a tornado in Moore, Okla. (AP Photo Sue Ogrocki, File)

In this Sunday, Aug. 4, 2013 photo, Kai Heuangpraseuth, 9, right, who was pulled from the rubble of Plaza Towers Elementary school following the May 20, 2013 tornado, poses for a photo with his mother, Jacalyn Russell, and sisters Reminisce Chanthavong, 5, left, and Scarlet Russell, 1, in Moore, Okla. Russell said that it’s not just Kai – whenever there is a storm she ends up with all three children climbing into bed with her. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

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MOORE, Okla. (AP) — Oklahoma school officials hope Friday’s start of a new school year will help pupils put the memory of the deadly May 20 tornado behind them.

Seven students at the Plaza Towers Elementary School were among the 24 people killed by an EF-5 twister that hit Moore almost three months ago. Students at Plaza Towers and nearby Briarwood Elementary, which also was destroyed, will attend classes in temporary buildings at least for the next year.

“I’m a little nervous about the beginning of school because I want the kids so badly to feel good and comfortable at school,” said Plaza Towers Principal Amy Simpson, who took cover from the storm in a 4-by-5-foot bathroom with her office staff and emerged to find a mangled car on a co-worker’s desk.

Since the storm, different students have found different ways to cope with their memories of the mayhem. Haley Delgado, 8, carries headphones to block out the noise of the wind and her brother, Xavier, 10, says he is scared by loud thunder.

Ruby Macias, 9, who was trapped under the same wall that crushed her classmates, remembers the screaming and the crying.

“She says she dreams about her friend,” said Ruby’s mother, Veronica Macias. “I don’t know what to tell her.”

The site where the Plaza Towers school once stood, in the heart of a neighborhood decimated by the tornado, has become a makeshift memorial for the dead and a meeting spot for volunteers, even though there is just a slab where the school used to be.

A handful of wind-battered trees are beginning to grow new leaves and branches again. Seven crosses, each carrying the name of a child killed in the storm, are accompanied by an eighth that has a black “7” inside a red heart.

“I’m not going to act as though those first couple of weeks (after the storm) weren’t so terribly difficult, because they were,” said Superintendent Robert Romines, a longtime Moore resident who took the district’s top post over the summer. “But since that day, we have turned a lot of corners. After our last funeral, we turned a corner.”

The district will build new schools at the sites of the old ones; the new ones will have tornado-safe rooms.

___

Follow Sean Murphy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/apseanmurphy

Associated Press

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

News Topics: General news, Tornadoes, Natural disasters, Weather, Accidents and disasters

People, Places and Companies: Oklahoma

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U.S. Headlines

New school year awaits kids who survived twister

Chuck Foley, Co-Created Twister, Dies At 82

Audio for this story from Morning Edition will be available at approximately 9:00 a.m. ET.

Festivalgoers play a giant game of Twister during the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts in southwest England last month.

Andrew Cowie/AFP/Getty Images

Charles “Chuck” Foley and his business partner Neil Rabens invented the game for Milton Bradley in 1966.

The pair originally called it Pretzel, and it was Milton Bradley that came up with the name Twister.

On All Things Considered last night, hosts Robert Siegel and Audie Cornish gave instructions on how to play the game, and reminded listeners about how it was responsible for some very ‘awkward” moments.

Twister is now manufactured by Hasbro Inc., and the company says it remains a top seller.

But if your Twister-playing days are behind you, Foley invented another product that doesn’t require you to get down on the floor.

He created un-du, a liquid adhesive remover.

Foley’s son Mark, president of un-du Products, Inc., told ATC that his father “enjoyed creating products and items.”

Chuck Foley died earlier this month in St. Paul, Minn., at the age of 82.

News

Chuck Foley, Co-Created Twister, Dies At 82

Chuck Foley, Co-Created Twister, Dies At 82

Audio for this story from Morning Edition will be available at approximately 9:00 a.m. ET.

Festivalgoers play a giant game of Twister during the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts in southwest England last month.

Andrew Cowie/AFP/Getty Images

Charles “Chuck” Foley and his business partner Neil Rabens invented the game for Milton Bradley in 1966.

The pair originally called it Pretzel, and it was Milton Bradley that came up with the name Twister.

On All Things Considered last night, hosts Robert Siegel and Audie Cornish gave instructions on how to play the game, and reminded listeners about how it was responsible for some very ‘awkward” moments.

Twister is now manufactured by Hasbro Inc., and the company says it remains a top seller.

But if your Twister-playing days are behind you, Foley invented another product that doesn’t require you to get down on the floor.

He created un-du, a liquid adhesive remover.

Foley’s son Mark, president of un-du Products, Inc., told ATC that his father “enjoyed creating products and items.”

Chuck Foley died earlier this month in St. Paul, Minn., at the age of 82.

News

Chuck Foley, Co-Created Twister, Dies At 82