Severe thunderstorms tend to grab headlines due to the chaos they can cause, but from an environmental standpoint they represent a basic contribution to the water supply. This is especially true in the central United States where they occur most frequently. As Earth’s climate changes, researchers question the degree to which severe thunderstorms and tornadoes—and the water they deliver—will increase or decrease in the future. Beginning May 10, the second Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment, or VORTEX2, began gathering data to help scientists answer this question.

Joining nearly 100 other participants for the month-long campaign, scientists from North Carolina State University are leading the “soundings” component of VORTEX2. Soundings are the data transmitted by weather balloons equipped with sensors—called radiosondes—that measure various environmental conditions like wind speed and direction, pressure, and temperature. To obtain as complete a depiction of the environment as possible, the scientists plan to launch weather balloons from their own mobile sounding station simultaneously with the four-per-day from the ARM Southern Great Plains site, and the two-per-day from the National Weather Service sounding network near Lamont, Oklahoma. They will also request additional soundings from these collaborators on days when tornadoes are forecasted by the NWS Storm Prediction Center.

The team will document both the pre-storm environmental conditions, and the vertical atmospheric profiles near active storms. Data from VORTEX2 soundings will be used to better understand the environmental conditions that produce varying kinds of thunderstorms (for example, those that produce tornadoes versus those that don’t), as well as to aid in forecasting thunderstorms and severe weather.