• After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

The El Reno Survey unveils the Tornado Environment Display

Joined
May 1, 2004
Messages
3,417
Location
Springfield, IL
Hey folks, sorry for my long absence from Stormtrack. I’ve just had no time between the chaotic chase season, being a new father, and programming work. I’m super excited to be able to post on behalf of a group that I’ve been working with for the past year. This unique opportunity has been a great collaborative effort between numerous chasers and meteorologists, and on a personal level has also given me the chance to combine my passion for chasing with my programming skillset.

So for the past year I've been working on a special website that lets you view the El Reno tornado from dozens of different perspectives, with synchronized video from storm chasers, on top of an animated map with data and radar overlays. This website is one of the many end products of the El Reno Survey, a crowd sourced study of the exceptional and tragic 31 May 2013 El Reno, OK storm. A team led by Anton Seimon and including Tracie Alexis Seimon, John Allen, Elke Edwards, and David Hoadley has gathered video and data from over 80 storm chasers who documented this event. The video has been precisely located in time and place to create a 4D view and database of the storm that can benefit scientist researchers and anyone curious about the event. The web tool we created to browse this data is called TED, the Tornado Environment Display, named after Dr. Ted Fujita who did his own crowd sourced studies of tornadoes in the 1950's. You can now use TED yourself to watch this event unfold by going to:
http://el-reno-survey.net/ted/


We're still adding features, data, and ironing out a couple quirks, but this is the product from the collaboration of dozens of folks like you, storms chasers and meteorologists working together. Many Stormtrack members’ videos are featured in the tool and we’re still in the process of adding many more.

There's a brief tutorial video available:

National Geographic has an article about the tool on their site to coincide with the release of their TV show about this storm: “Inside the Mega Twister”.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...ronment-display-el-reno-samaras-storm-science

The show airs tomorrow, Sunday December 6 at 9 central. We worked extensively with the TV crew providing information about the tornado and chasers who documented it. There are a couple of nice interview segments featuring our project lead, Anton Seimon, and the TED tool is briefly shown as well.

Check out the TED tool and let us know if you have any feedback. Thanks!
 
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