Vortex and other "chase missions" to the private sector.

[Shawn Gossman]

Hey folks,

So the NWS is doing cuts here and there to help the government spending budgets. The NWS and NOAA will occasionally do "chase missions" where they actually go out into the field to chase storms to collect date. This has been done with VORTEX 1 and 2. They spend a lot of money on the projects with personnel, gas, equipment, lodging and so on...

As an idea of budgeting, I propose they use the private sector for these "missions". There are plenty of storm chasers with recognition and enough experience to perform these tasks as private contractors. I think it would help to cut budget costs and keep the money going for more important things.

How do you all feel about this?

Would it work? Would it be a failure?

 

[Jeff Duda]

As far as I know, the NWS did not fund much or any part of VORTEX 1 or VORTEX 2. I believe those were funded almost entirely by grants from NSF awarded to specific PIs who worked for academic or research institutions to do their own specific research. I was not a part of either, and some members of the forum (i.e., Jeff Snyder and Patrick Marsh) were, so they could probably give you a more complete picture of the funding for those projects.

With the above in mind, I wouldn't expect to ever see the NWS conduct its own large scale severe weather observing mission ever, simply because there's not enough funding, and there probably never will be. The only organizations that will probably ever be capable of conducting such missions would be private companies and/or academic/research institutions.

 

[casey]

I doubt it would work. V2 wasn't about getting the best tornado video, or in some cases, not even getting a good view of a updraft. I have not done much non-V2 chasing in the midwest and high plains, but how many of you carry a full instrumentation package, do calibrations to know your biases and check your data for quality? That doesn't even include the people who deployed stationary equipment to measure dynamic and therm data, and precip characteristics. And then there are the radar trucks... The crews that made up V2 for the most part operate year to year, the thing that made V2 special is everyone agreed to work together, target a common storm and arranged for sharing the data. If the private sector wanted to take on a role for V3, it would have to be as a funding source, just as NSF was to the many V2 PIs.