Yo Kansas.

Welcome, ladies and gentlehooves, to the first official official post of this here Vortex2 blog. If you are reading this, I shall assume that you already know what Vortex2 is. If you are not reading this and can still see what I’ve written, I shall assume that you are psychic and can use your mystic powers to discover what Vortex2 is. As neither of these assumptions, however, have been scientifically tested, I suppose a brief description of Vortex2 is in order:

Vortex2 (or the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment, part 2) is the itsy bitsy (ok, huge) effort of a few (well, a lot) of scientists to look at what goes on exactly goes on at the lowest levels in tornadoes. This is where tornadoes are most damaging (it’s where there is stuff to damage), but it’s also where tornadoes are least understood, because our trusty nationwide network of Doppler radars simply can’t “see” this area.

And *poof* that’s been taken care of.

Vortex2’s CSWR contingent is composed of a bunch of zany/cool people from all over America and Europe who will be operating 3 mobile Doppler radars/Dopplers on Wheels (DOWs) and 4 mobile mesonet vehicles, and deploying 16 rather heavy pods (both the pods and mesonets measure things like wind, temperature, and humidity). The goal is to take these things to severe weather happenings within the Vortex2 domain, collect a bunch of data, and analyze it to find out previously unknown things about tornadoes and tornado producing storms.

CSWR’s Vortex2 kicked off several days ago at the CSWR hangar in Boulder, CO. After several days of packing, fixing radars, moving stuff around the hangar so the resident airplanes could exit, and making sure all of the pods and mesonets and their data connections are functional, we’ve left Boulder and landed in the good ol’ state of Kansas with the cows and the corn. Hopefully we won't be experiencing any snow in the Great Plains (like we did in Boulder). Repairs and fine tuning shall continue in hotel parking lots until the weather (or restlessness) pulls us away…

Purdue people and a non Purdue person (we'll forgive him) hang out by a V2 probe at the CSWR hangar in Boulder.
PS- Some other Vortex2 blogs/picture pages of note:
http://everyday-is-windsday.blogspot.com (courtesy of Mallie)http://rydzblog.com (courtesy of Matt)http://tornadoscientists.blogspot.com (courtesy of Karen and CSWR)http://vortexjeff.shutterfly.com (courtesy of Jeff)