A tornado probe

[Elliott Budd]

I have been thinking about building a tornado probe so I looked on Google. I found Tim Samaras"s turtle and TOWER probes, and Josh wurman pods. I don't want to infringe on Tim's design because I don't know if he had patents or copyrights. I like both designs. Any suggestions on how I move forward?

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[Rick Schmidt]

Are you sure you want to move forward with such a dangerous activity? I think we ALL need to learn from the tragedy of last May 31 and stay back from violent tornadoes..........actually any tornado. I am content to leave the research to the professionals.

 

[Elliott Budd]

Rick I understand the risks. every time I see a tornado it reminds me of Tim. I'm going to start out launching radiosondes into the storm. I don't want media attention, just the data.

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[Skip Talbot]

I don't want media attention, just the data.

What data? What hypothesis are you testing? How is your research different from other research that has already been done? Are you going to publish your findings in a scientific journal? I'm not trying to be condescending here, but I feel that most folks who say that they're in it for the science and not the fame don't really have a clue what real science is. I'm not saying this is you. You may have very good reasons for gathering data from inside a tornado. I just hope that people aren't deciding that they need to put a box in a tornado to see what happens to it, claiming it's science, and needlessly endangering themselves in the process. Storm chasing is a relatively safe hobby, until you decide that you need to get in the path of a tornado.

Ok, no more lecturing. As to your original question, I don't think you'll have any legal issues with building similar probes. Both patents and copyrights are used to protect inventions and original works. Copyright wouldn't really apply here. I could be wrong, but I also doubt that anyone has patented a tornado probe design or a specific problem inherent to putting a probe in a tornado. Patents are used to protect the value of an invention. Most people aren't making the big bucks off tornado probes. This would be a problem if Josh Wurman was selling tornado probes on Ebay and then you decided to also sell his tornado probes on Ebay.

Building tornado probes is a fun and engaging project. Go for it! Just be careful out there. No data is more important than your safety.

 

[Timothy Finn]

I concur with Skip. I'd also like to know, just out of general curiousity, what your ideas are. I'll tell you why.

When I got into this two years ago, I thought, hey, it would be cool to collect my own datasets. Thing is, if you watch this forum close, lots of folks publish enough findings to scrutinize.

Don't think for a minute that you have be "into something" to chase. My own personal motivation is to practice forecasting skills, and get out there and see if it verifies. For me, that's win-win. I get the challenge, and the chase. Not only that, if I bust, there's data all over the place that I can review, and find out where I went wrong. (And I do it a lot, so don't think you have anything to prove, or folks will look down on you.)

Welcome to the board, have a great time with you ambitions, and be safe out there!

Tim

 

[Elliott Budd]

Ok I don't have a definitive hypothesis yet, but I'm working on it. I want to just get a complete data set of the storm including the tornado. I would place place instruments around the storm collecting general conditions like temp/humidity, wind speed, etc. While launching radiosondes into the storm. The idea of the probes data is the basics for the most part.

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[Jeff Duda]

Ok I don't have a definitive hypothesis yet, but I'm working on it. I want to just get a complete data set of the storm including the tornado. I would place place instruments around the storm collecting general conditions like temp/humidity, wind speed, etc. While launching radiosondes into the storm. The idea of the probes data is the basics for the most part.

I have to believe that you have no idea what you are getting yourself into. Before you take a single step further I HIGHLY recommend you read up on the VORTEX and VORTEX2 projects, including their proposals, methodologies, and results. Many papers are now being published using data collected in VORTEX2. You can find many of them in AMS journals, radar conference proceedings, and SLS proceedings. What you describe, however, has essentially already been done. Unless you have a huge following and staff to help you with this, you aren't going to be able to accomplish even one of your goals because that kind of work takes TEAMS; a single individual cannot do this kind of work, no matter how ingenious or industrious. The VORTEX(2) projects had probably about 100 people on multiple teams with coordinators up the wazoo to try to get data sets that lined up in time for a given case.

 

[Elliott Budd]

Once I attend and hopefully graduate from OU I will try to get a team to help. I will try to get the journals and follow your recommendation.

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