List of tornadic researchers

This is a list of notable people who researched tornadoes.

Living

Name of person Research on tornadoes
Howard Bluestein
  • Co-inventor of the TOtable Tornado Observatory (TOTO)[1]
  • A principal investigator for the VORTEX2 Project[2]
  • Author of the 1993 book Severe Convective Storms and Tornadoes: Observations and Dynamics
  • Author of the 1999 book Tornado Alley: Monster Storms of the Great Plains
Chris Broyles
Donald W. Burgess
Thomas P. Grazulis
Karen Kosiba
Anthony Lyza
Timothy P. Marshall
Leigh Orf An "expert on severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, and using supercomputers to simulate the atmosphere". Won the IDC/Hyperion High Performance Computing Innovation Excellence Award in 2014 and 2016.[28]
Erik N. Rasmussen The field coordinator of the first of the VORTEX projects in 1994-1995 and a lead principal investigator for VORTEX2 from 2009-2010[29] and VORTEX-SE from 2016-2017.[30]
Robin Tanamachi Worked on the VORTEX projects from 2015 to 2021.[31]
Reed Timmer
Joshua Wurman

Deceased

Name of person Research on tornadoes
Cleveland Abbe
Frank Hagar Bigelow Created Bigelow's Formula, which was to find the rotational speed of a tornado based on the height above sea level.[40][41]
Charles A. Doswell III Lead forecaster for the first project VORTEX in 1994/1995, produced more than 100 refereed publications, and several contributions to books and encyclopedias. He edited the American Meteorological Society (AMS) monograph Severe Convective Storms as well as co-authored two papers there.[42][43]
John Park Finley First American to extensively study tornadoes. He also wrote the first known book on the subject as well as many other manuals and booklets, collected vast climatological data, set up a nationwide weather observer network, started one of the first private weather enterprises, and opened an early aviation weather school.[44][45][46][47]
Ted Fujita
  • Creator of the Fujita scale[48]
  • "Mr. Tornado"[48]
  • Developed the concept of multiple vortex tornadoes, which feature multiple small funnels (suction vortices) rotating within a larger parent cloud. His work established that, far from being rare events as was previously believed, most powerful tornadoes were composed of multiple vortices. He also advanced the concept of mini-swirls in intensifying tropical cyclones.<ref">Dorschner, John (22 August 1993). "One year later, Andrew's scars remain". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. ISSN 1068-624X. Retrieved 15 June 2021 – via Newspaper.com. Fujita found winds within winds within winds. Mini-swirls and microburts and swatchs danced madly within the powerful eye wall, smashing some neighborhoods, then skating away, leaving other subdivisions with comparatively little damage.</ref>[49]
Gottlob Burchard Genzmer German Lutheran theologian, tutor and naturalist who conducted the first ever tornado damage survey for the 1764 Woldegk tornado. His damage surveys ultimately led to the European Severe Storms Laboratory rating the first and only T11 tornado on the TORRO scale.[50][51][52][53]
J. J. O'Donnell
  • Published a detailed meteorological case study and damage analysis on the 1898 Fort Smith tornado.[54]
    • One of the first to observed and measure a pressure drop from a hitting tornado.[54]
    • Known for recorded the order-of-sequence of what an approaching tornado sounds like: "a gurgling noise...like water rushing rushing out of a bottle, followed immediately by a rumbling, such as that made by a number of heavy carriages rolling rapidly over a cobblestone pavement, and finally like a railroad train." O'Donnell later stated these three sounds, in sequence is the "tornado roar".[54] This sequence of sounds documented by O'Donnell, particularly the sound of a train, is the described sound of a tornado by people, even in the 21st century.[55]
Floyd C. Pate Conducted case study on the 1945 Montgomery tornado. Pate described the tornado as "the most officially observed one in history", as it passed 2 miles (3.2 km) away from four different government weather stations, including the U.S. Weather Bureau office in Montgomery.[56][57]
Tim Samaras
  • Founder of a field research team called Tactical Weather Instrumented Sampling in Tornadoes EXperiment (TWISTEX).[58]
  • Samaras designed and built his own weather probes, and deployed them in the path of tornadoes in order to gain scientific insight into the inner workings of a tornado.[58] With one such in-situ probe, he captured the largest drop in atmospheric pressure ever recorded, 100 hPa (mb) in less than one minute, when an F4 tornado struck one of several probes placed near Manchester, South Dakota, on June 24, 2003. The accomplishment is listed in Guinness World Records as the "greatest pressure drop measured in a tornado".[59] The probe was dropped in front of the oncoming tornado a mere 82 seconds before it hit.[60] The measurement is also the lowest pressure (adjusted for elevation) ever recorded at Earth's surface, 850 hectopascals (25.10 inHg).[61][62]
  • Coauthored the 2009 book Tornado Hunter: Getting Inside the Most Violent Storms on Earth.[58]
  • Was killed while chasing the 2013 El Reno tornado.[58]
Józef Karol Skrodzki Polish scientist and professor at the University of Warsaw, who wrote a paper describing a tornado that occurred in Mazew, Łęczyca County in Poland on August 10, 1819. It was described that the tornado had the appearance of a funnel whose color seemed different depending on the lighting, and that it damaged several buildings by tearing off roofs, damaging the structure, and lifting a hay wagon into the air. The paper was published in a collection of works by the Warsaw Society of Friends of Learning in 1821.[63][64]
Carl Young Scientists on the TWISTEX team who was killed in the 2013 El Reno tornado.[58]

References

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