The Dorothy and DOT machines featured in the popular 1996 disaster movie Twister were based on a real project by the National Severe Storm Laboratory (NSSL). In the movie, Dorothy is placed in the path of a tornado as tiny sensors swirl up into the intense winds and take data from inside a tornado. In real life, this would be nearly impossible.
The Totable Tornado Observatory, or TOTO for short, was a project created by the NSSL and used for several years with little success. The TOTO was large, bulky, and hard to place in the path of a tornado. Inside the TOTO were sensors that measured wind speed, dew point temperature, and other atmospheric conditions. The difference was the sensors did not fly up inside the tornado.
Newer projects were developed by the NSSL that were a big improvement on the TOTO platform. In the mid-1990's, VORTEX-1 was designed to deploy "turtles" to study tornadoes. First used in 1986, a turtle was like a flipped-over stainless steel salad bowl filled with tornado sensors. More on the turtles is available from the Tornado Project.
Today, the NSSL is working to deploy the VORTEX-2(Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment-2, or V2) from May 10 - June 15 of 2009 and 2010. The V2 will target severe storms in the central plains with instruments including radars, mobile vehicles equipped with instruments, weather balloons, and unmanned aerial vehicles.
According to the NSSL, the project will focus on gaining new insight about how, when, and why tornadoes form, why some thunderstorms produce tornadoes and others do not, and the structure of tornadoes. Answers to these questions will help improve forecasts and provide better warning systems for potential tornado outbreaks.
