FLORENCE, Ala. (AP) - As the clouds darkened and storms started developing across northwest Alabama last week, a team from the University of Alabama in Huntsville set up there as part of its efforts to harness information from the approaching fronts.
“We’re looking at the environment that surrounds storms, what triggers it to become tornadic or not,” said Dustin Phillips, a staff member with UAH’s atmospheric science program.
For the last few years, UAH scientists, students and graduate students have been involved in weather research.
“We’re trying to gain some better understanding of what is going on inside a storm and what we can do to predict when a tornado will develop,” said Phil Gentry, communications director for the Earth System Science Center at UAH.
Monday and Tuesday, a team used the Mobile Alabama X-band radar, also known as MAX, in Colbert, Franklin and Marion counties to collect information on the storms that swept through the region.
“They were looking for data that might give a better understanding of the factors that make one storm spin up to a tornado while other storm cells around it do not,” Gentry said. “The goal is to pinpoint features in a storm that might help forecasters do a better job of predicting severe weather events.”
Phillips, who has been at UAH since 2001 as a student and now a staff member, said Monday afternoon the group was outside of Russellville on Alabama 24 and was able to catch the “genesis” of a system crossing Franklin County.
“There is general knowledge from anything that is out there,” Phillips said. “Our overall goal is to know more about storms to be able to predict (tornadoes) and save lives and property.”
Colbert County Emergency Management Agency Director Mike Melton said learning more about the storms, their patterns and what makes a storm cell become a tornado is valuable data.
“A lot of times a tornado will go over the county, and it doesn’t sit down,” Melton said. “If they can predict the direction of travel a tornado will take and which cells of a storm will become a tornado, the better off we’ll all be.
“We all need all the help we can get in predicting these weather patterns so that we can help save someone’s life.”
Phillips said trying to develop information that can be helpful to meteorologists is a process.
“We take the information we gather from the storms we go to and then compare with other storms, to see the patterns,” he said.
Gentry said the group is also looking into trails that storms tend to take.
“They’re trying to see what are the factors that cause the storms and tornadoes to follow certain areas and paths,” Gentry said. “Part of that is the nature of the storms. They tend to move southwest to northeast.”
“We’re looking at terrain. Does that have an impact on the path the tornado takes?” Phillips said.
Lauderdale County Emergency Management Agency Director George Grabryan said the National Weather Service Center in Huntsville uses information the UAH group provides.
“It’s really amazing what they are trying to do and the success they have had so far,” Grabryan said.
Gentry said that over the years, some members of the group have worked on the “debris signature” theory.
“And Monday (when the tornado hit Limestone County) weather service officials were saying there was a debris cloud and a tornado was following so people needed to take cover,” Gentry said. “Through research they have determined that nothing else (but a tornado) is going to project debris 30,000 feet in the air. So, when they see a debris cloud, a tornado is very close behind.”
Grabryan said anything that can help weather officials with more precise predictions is helpful.
“If they can give the weather service a little more advantage of better predicting severe weather and tornadoes, it just helps us all,” Grabryan said.
“We’re trying to give people a better heads up. Help them be more prepared for tornadoes so they can be safer,” Phillips said.
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Information from: TimesDaily, https://www.timesdaily.com/
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