Aerial Thunderstorm/Convective Research & Chasing

[Andy Lawrence]

I was wondering if anyone has ever explored aerial storm chasing and used aerial images to study storms from above.

Showers and thunderstorms are giant waterfalls in the sky when viewed from the air, a lot can be taken away and learned especially when Gibson ridge 3D volumetric images are combined with the aerials, you can find storm height and the gustfront height and just use them as a fun case study tool like we have done below.

 

[Mark Gressman Jr]

I believe one of the mods here has done it before, or he at least talked about it in the past. I'd reach out to @Skip Talbot for more info. I've also seen a dramatic increase of drone usage for chasing which makes for some awesome video.

 

[Skip Talbot]

Thanks for the tag. I chased tornado warned supercells in a small plane four times. I wouldn't recommend it. You can read more about those chases here if you're interested:

Skip Talbot's May 22, 2012 Chase Log

Skip Talbot's May 23, 2012 Chase Log

Our most photogenic shots:

Skip Talbot's May 25, 2012 Chase Log

And one of the worst days of my life:

Skip Talbot's May 18, 2013 Chase Log

skip.cc

Drones are the way to go I think. Cheaper and of course safer.

 

[Todd Lemery]

I’ve put my drone up several times times just for fun. My goal really is, despite the challenges, to fly it into a tornado. I’m not trying to learn anything scientifically, just as a challenge, which I thought might be easier than it is. I’ve lost one drone in the process.
A couple things I’ve learned is with a low based storm you don’t gain a whole lot visually before losing all sight. Another is that unless it’s a relatively slow moving storm, you’re screwed unless you can launch from a position more or less in front of the storms path.
One thing that I’ve found out is you can put the drone up and get great looks at a storm when trees, lack of roads or terrain don’t let you see. It’s frustrating when a storm looks good on radar and you can’t see it. A drone solves that.

 

[Jeff Wright]

Small drone will likely be flung around haphazardly.

A couple of suggestions.

Hobby rocket enthusiasts are looking at ways to de-spin footage

So they might help you.

Doswell’s footage of Pampa showed cables hanging vertically while entrained in the circulation.

This might allow a drone to have stability if a helium balloon is on a tether above the drone and one with a heavy gas is beneath it.

Remember, some high altitude balloons can endure high speeds aloft.

Now while this may also be a lightning hazard (use robot arm to deploy)—kites have been used as camera platforms:

The Kite-Borne Camera That Captured Post-Quake San Francisco in 1906

Drone photography is in the news this week, with protesters in Istanbul using unmanned cameras to document the events from above. Interestingly, the very first instance of remote aerial photography was devised to document an urban crisis, too: the 1906 earthquake that partially leveled San...

gizmodo.com

In earlier posts, I made mention of camera systems designed to peer through darkness and rain…like this:

Thermal imaging innovation allows AI to see through pitch darkness like broad daylight

Researchers at Purdue University are advancing the world of robotics and autonomy with their patent-pending method that improves on traditional machine vision and perception.

phys.org

Having smoke bombs along a project mogul type balloon chain with go-pros along its length may allow footage actually useful to scientists.