A team of researchers from the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory served as NOAA Scientists in Residence at the world-renowned San Francisco Exploratorium science museum March 8-25. During the event, “Rain in the Air: The Science of Storms,” the team offered Exploratorium staff and visitors a unique look at the tools, techniques and people behind the effort to better understand severe storms.

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NSSL has released an image documenting the rotation tracks of the devastating tornadoes on April 27, 2011.

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Researchers presented preliminary results from the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2009-2010 (VORTEX2) during a special session at the American Meteorological Society Severe Local Storms Conference held in Denver, Colo. in October.

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The Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment – 2 data collection began its second year of data collection on May 1 and will be in the field through June 15. VORTEX2 is the largest tornado research project in history to explore how, when and why tornadoes form.

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Researchers from the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory and their associates from about a dozen other organizations are gearing up for the second year of the VORTEX2 field campaign.
NSSL Video producer James Murnan has just finished a video on VORTEX2 as part of That Weather Show, a video/podcast series by the NOAA Weather Partners.

More about VORTEX2: http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/vortex2

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The NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory’s (NSSL) X-Band Dual-Polarized mobile Doppler radar (NO-XP), known for investigating tornadoes, has been deployed to support forecasting during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. The effort is an international collaboration on the science of winter nowcasting in complex terrain called Science and NOWcasting of Olympic Weather for Vancouver 2010 (SNOW-V10).

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Research scientists studying improvements in tornado forecasting and new radar systems at the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla., Michael C. Coniglio and Pamela L. Heinselman, received presidential commendation when they were awarded the prestigious 2009 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) at a ceremony Jan. 13 at the White House. The award, which was conferred by President Obama, is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of their careers. An award ceremony is planned in Washington, D.C. in the fall.

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NSSL’s Dave Stensrud, Ph.D., recently gave a Short Course on “Parameterization Schemes for Numerical Weather Prediction Models” at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
The course was a very intensive introduction to the parameterization of physical processes in numerical weather prediction models.
“This is a [...]

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Tropical Storm Ida gave the Coastal and Inland – Flooding Observation and Warning project (CI-FLOW) team a valuable research opportunity this week to demonstrate, in real-time, the capability to use the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory’s real-time gridded quantitative precipitation estimates (QPE) in the CI-FLOW river models.

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Five NSSL/CIMMS researchers from NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) in Norman, Okla., have earned the organization’s 2009 Outstanding Scientific Paper Award for work that is expected to enable earlier warnings for severe storms.

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