OSWEGO -- Meteorology students at SUNY Oswego will soon get a firsthand look at how tornadoes look. They're planning a trip to Tornado Alley.
Assistant Professor of Meteorology Scott Steiger has been a storm chaser for more than a decade. He says he's been on about 100 chases. Over the past few years, he's been bringing students with him. He calls the experience an "adrenaline rush."
"One minute, things don't look like they're going to happen, and it doesn't look like there's going to be thunderstorms in your area," says Steiger. "Then, literally a half hour later, you have a raging supercell, which is a rotated thunderstorm, that could produce a tornado."
Steiger says the team typically covers about 8,000 miles, and team members travel from Texas to North Dakota and Colorado to Missouri.
The students take pictures and shoot video to document their research. During the last two trips, they launched weather balloons to collect data for a multi-million dollar government project called Vortex 2.
Steiger says the point of the trip is to give students a chance to apply everything they've learned in the classroom to actual thunderstorms and tornadoes. Students have the chance to compare their forecasting data to what they're actually seeing in the sky.
What do you think of what the students are doing? Is storm chasing anything you would ever try? Post your comments below:
