Every Tornado Tool Explained

How Scientists Study Tornadoes

Scientists use tools that move progressively closer to storms, from satellites in orbit to instruments placed near the ground.

• Weather satellites: Geostationary satellites such as GOES-18 and GOES-19 monitor storm tops. They cannot see tornadoes directly, but can detect turbulent, bulging cloud tops that help forecasters identify where to look.
• Weather balloons and radiosondes: Launched around the world, radiosondes measure temperature, humidity, pressure, and wind as they rise. Their vertical profiles can reveal conditions favorable for tornadoes, including warm, moist rising air and winds that change with height. The video notes that some services reduced launches in 2025 because of staffing shortages.
• Doppler radar: Radar tracks motion by measuring changes in the frequency of returning signals. Adjacent winds moving toward and away from a radar can reveal rotation before a tornado reaches the ground. Radar can also help identify hail and debris. However, because of Earth’s curvature, its beam may pass above the lowest part of a distant storm.
• Mobile mesonets: Cars equipped with roof-mounted sensors and GPS collect frequent measurements of temperature, humidity, pressure, and wind as they drive through storms. These observations suggest tornadoes are more likely when the cold air spreading behind a storm is not excessively cold. Researchers also deploy StickNet weather stations along storm paths.
• Doppler on Wheels: Mobile radar trucks can scan low levels of a storm that fixed radar may miss. The video describes measurements of exceptionally high winds near Bridge Creek and Moore, Oklahoma; El Reno, Oklahoma; and Greenfield, Iowa.
• Research drones: Uncrewed aircraft carry weather sensors into parts of storms inaccessible to cars or people. They help researchers study how warm inflow and cold outflow interact, especially near the rear of a storm, and investigate why some rotating storms produce tornadoes while others do not. In 2019, the TORUS project combined drones, radar trucks, mobile mesonets, and a research aircraft to study supercells across the Great Plains.
• Tornado probes: Instruments are placed in a tornado’s expected path and abandoned as the storm approaches. An early probe called Toto was named after Dorothy’s dog in The Wizard of Oz. Later, low-profile “turtle” probes were designed to resist being blown away. In 2003, a probe built by Tim Samaras recorded a pressure drop of about 100 millibars when an F4 tornado passed over it near Manchester, South Dakota. Samaras, his son Paul, and colleague Carl Young were killed in the 2013 El Reno tornado.
• Tornado Intercept Vehicle (TIV): Filmmaker Sean Casey built an armored, roughly seven-ton vehicle to bring a camera close to a tornado. Its protective features include steel armor, reinforced glass, ground-level skirts, and hydraulic spikes. The video says debris penetrated the crew compartment during a 2013 encounter, illustrating the danger and limits of approaching a tornado.

Researchers and Named Sources

• Tim Samaras: Tornado-probe engineer and researcher
• Paul Samaras and Carl Young: Killed with Tim Samaras in the 2013 El Reno tornado
• Sean Casey: Filmmaker who built the Tornado Intercept Vehicle
• University of Oklahoma: Associated with a radar truck described in the video
• TORUS: 2019 storm-research project
• GOES-18 and GOES-19: Weather satellites mentioned in the video
• The Wizard of Oz: Source of the name Toto

The subtitles do not provide a formal bibliography.