Aerial footage from the June 17 Nebraska tornadofest!
As mentioned in earlier blog entries, the TVN/Radiance Technologies team successfully launched the RC plane into the tornadic southern Nebraska atmosphere on June 17th. The video below shows the initial launch with a tornado in the background, and the RC plane deploying parachute probes into the inflow region of the storm. Note the aerial shots of the parachute probe getting deployed out the rear, and sucked toward the tornado before wrapping around the backside! Each of these probes measures temperature, pressure, and dewpoint inside the tornado; one of the probes can even record HD video! The probes were recovered that night from a corn field. Each of the probes has GPS tracking ability and we plot their path and location in 3-D on Google Earth in the Radiance vehicle. At the time of the video below, we were in the process of driving into theses same tornadoes (shown far away from the plane vehicle perspective) with the SRV Dominator, with the radar pointed in the vertical to measure the updraft winds while the roof-mounted anemometer measured winds in the horizontal. Be sure to watch
Storm Chasers on Discovery this fall for the rest of the story!! (Click on the
"READ MORE" button, below, for the video!)
http://www.tornadovideos.net/component/content/article/36-tornadoes/975-aerial-footage-from-the-june-17-nebraska-tornadofest
