they have ten mobile radar to scan the tornadoes but one of the key pieces is information they re miss iing is the data vy close to the ground as that funnel touches the ground so they have these tornado pods they destroy and that measures temperature, wind speed, humidity and pressure, and there s some theory that maybe even the slightest temperature changes can form or dissipate a tornado so that s why they actually put these pods down very close to the tornado, all in the hopes of having them run right over the top of them. it s very helen hunt-esque. they will high tail it out of there before the tornado actually gets to them. that s the data they re trying to get. if they can do that tomorrow and deploy a tornado or maybe even two that can certainly help their research. keep in mind we re not rooting for a tornado. we know they can be destructive. tornadoes could be coming your way tomorrow and they could be very, very strong but, alex, we ll be there to broadcast it are for you l
thank you for joining us. good luck. you re welcome. thank you. god bless. and you. a group of scientists, students, and researchers have set up camp in tornado alley. they have a fleet of 40 vehicles ready to chase down a storm at a moment s notice all part of the newest phase of the vortex-2 project, why thunderstorms spawn tornadoes and others don t. weather channel meteorologist mike bettes is traveling with the team. mike, with a good morning. i don t know if the scientists might be tired of hearing this but you have to think of the movie twister. i m looking at you and thinking twister, here we go. reporter: it s exactly that. this is definitely real life tornado chasing, alex. these researchers are out here for a very good reason. what they re trying to do is find the fine details of a tornado that we really don t know yet what makes tornadoes tick and how can they create a better early warning system.
experts possibly for months. back to you. well, people are still talking about their stories from those five days. that s for sure. in the u.s. today a group of researchers are hoping for some disruptive weather. you heard right. they have gathered together and loaded up with storm chasing equipment all in an effort to find out why some massive thunderstorms spawn tornadoes and others don t. weather channel meteorologist mike bettes with with members of the vortex-2 project. kind of sounds scary. when are you going to go for your next tornado encounter? when do you expect that to to happen is this. reporter: we definitely expect that to happen. a significant tornado outbreak will happen on monday. this could be one of the largest outbreaks vortex-2, this huge armada, has seen in their two-year history of this project. everything is pointing at oklahoma and kansas tomorrow. and really what they want to do is deploy all of their land based instruments.
tomorrow with very key and vital in their research. a $13 billion research project. there s a lot at stake here. there is. bill paxon and helen hunt stars of the movie twister. this is just like that. how close have you gotten to a tornado? reporter: well, last year the one tornado we were right there. we were a good distance away from it when it first formed. it came right towards us and we were lucky, though. about a mile and a half before it got to us it completely fizzled out. i think a mril and a half was close enough. yeah, that was close enough. okay, mike bettes, do take care and i mean it. you can follow the great tornado hunt online. check out the vortex-2 project on weather.com. her name is elena kagan and there s speculation she could be the president s choice for the supreme court but why her? it s rollback time at walmart,
oklahoma. 37 preliminary reports of tornadoes. we think it ll be a little calmer today. there is still that chance in isolated areas of western oklahoma for tornadoes today. let me ask you, joshua, exactly how bad were these tornadoes in the scheme of things? well, they haven t been officially rated yet. but probably they ll be rated around ef-3 which is quite a strong tornado. it s not the most severe. ef-5. but these tornado caused substantial damage to many structures. josh, let me ask you also, what s now the process here? do scientists go into the field to figure out exactly where this hit? is there anything that happened here that can help with warnings in the future? well, there are teams now surveying the damage. the vortex 2 project, its goal is to capture data in the tornado storms before they make tornado. yesterday unfortunately due to the fast motion and forming farther west than estimated we didn t capture the genesis process. what we did capture was the