"I Live for Danger"

This piece of video awesomeness stars three of my coworkers.


Check out The Weather Channel segment "Vortex 2: I Live for Danger"
What makes it awesome?

1. "Top Gun" reference.
2. "Brooklin Hipster" comparison of a South Shore native.
3. Red Sox plug....
4. Underwear reference.
5. The drying of underwear on the radar (actually that might be the only way to sanitize those 2 pair by week 4, way to go Bethany!).
6. Those shorts!!!
7. Seeing a smart-ass friend on national TV.
   

I want write more but I can't stop chuckling...

... so I'll cut and paste the description of the Vortex 2 experiment from their homepage:

VORTEX2 is by far the largest and most ambitious effort ever made to understand tornadoes. We expect over 100 scientists and crew in up to 40 science and support vehicles to participate in this unique, fully nomadic, field program in May/June 2009-2010. The National Science Foundation (NSF) foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration (NOAA) together are contributing over $10 million towards this effort. Participants will be drawn from several universities, and several government and private organizations, and will be international including members from Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

The basic questions are simple to ask, but hard to answer.

- How, when, and why do tornadoes form? Why some are violent and long lasting while others are weak and short lived?

- What is the structure of tornadoes? How strong are the winds near the ground? How exactly do they do damage?

- How can we learn to forecast tornadoes better? Current warnings have an only 13 minute average lead time and a 70% false alarm rate. Can we make warnings more accurate? Can we warn 30, 45, 60 minutes ahead?

VORTEX2 will use an unprecedented fleet of cutting edge instruments to literally surround tornadoes and the supercell thunderstorms that form them. An armada of 10 mobile radars, including the Doppler On Wheels (DOW) from the Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR), SMART-Radars from the University of Oklahoma, the NOXP radar from the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), radars from the University of Massachusetts, the Office of Naval Research and Texas Tech University (TTU), 10 mobile mesonet instrumented vehicles from NSSL and CSWR, 38 deployable instruments including Sticknets (TTU), Tornado-Pods (CSWR), 4 disdrometers (University of Colorado (CU) and U of Illinois), weather balloon launching vans (NSSL, NCAR and SUNY-Oswego), unmanned aircraft (CU), damage survey teams (CSWR, Lyndon State College, NCAR), and photogrammetry teams (Lyndon State Univesity and NCAR), and other instruments.

VORTEX2 is fully nomadic with no home base. Scientists will roam from state to state following severe weather outbreaks through the Plains.

VORTEX2 will hit the road from 10 May - 13 June 2009 and 1 May - 15 June 2010.

Still laughing
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