Allen Research Group

Past Research Projects

Project: The El Reno Survey Project

Funding Agency: National Geographic Expedition Council - EC0692-14

Project Details

Nearly every storm in the Great Plains is surrounded by a mixture of recreational and research storm chasers. Almost all of these individuals visually document the storm using still photographs and videos, and a number also make formal or informal measurements of the atmospheric state. This project developed the first approach to crowd-sourcing storm chaser observations, while coordinating and synchronizing these visual data to make it accessible to the scientific community for researching tornadoes and severe thunderstorms. The end result also offers a novel method for creating an archive of the characteristics of severe thunderstorms. The approach utilizes a storm chaser survey form to record metadata of storm chaser routes and experiences of the storm, and allows contribution of video and photographic stills to an archive. These data are then synchronized in time using the characteristic flash patterns of lightning in the image frames, and space using GPS logs and precise visual fixing using Google Streetview.

Project Deliverables & Outcomes

The final products of this project were a web-visualization tool that allows chasers and researchers to view the El Reno tornado and parent storm from multiple perspectives at the same time, a research archive for matching to other studies of the parent storm and a methodology that could form the basis for records of future tornadic storms for research purposes. Other results for this project can be seen here, including a recommended set of practices for storm chasers to make their observations scientific. The first descriptive paper of the approach and preliminary results was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (Seimon et al. 2016). Further research is ongoing to analyze the various elements of this tornadic storm using the derived archive, including the tornado dynamics, hail characteristics and lightning attributes. One examples of this project is the recent paper looking at the seven inch hail documented by storm chasers and locals during the event (Witt et al. 2018). In addition to the research applications and methodology, this tool is now used in teaching introductory severe weather classes to illustrate the features of tornadic thunderstorms and the dangers of waiting to see a tornado before acting.

El Reno Tool

Publications

Witt, A., D. Burgess, A. Seimon, J. T. Allen, J. C. Snyder, H. B. Bluestein, 2017: Rapid-scan Radar Observations of an Oklahoma Tornadic Hailstorm producing extremely large hail. Weather and Forecasting, 33, 1263–1282. PDF

Seimon, A., J. T. Allen, T. Seimon, S. Talbot, D. Hoadley and E. Edwards, 2016: Crowd-sourcing the El Reno 2013 Tornado: A new approach for collation and display of storm chaser imagery for scientific applications. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 97, 2069–2084. PDF

Presentations

Houser, J., Bluestein, H. B., Seimon, A., Snyder, J., Thiem, K., J. T. Allen, Talbot, S., 2018: Rapid-Scan Mobile Radar Observations of Tornadogenesis. Poster Presentation, AGU Fall Meeting 2018, Washington D.C.

Houser, J., A. Seimon, K. J. Thiem, H. B. Bluestein, S. Talbot, J. C. Snyder, J. T. Allen, 2018: Novel Observations of the 2013 El Reno Tornado: Confirming Ground-Up Tornadogenesis through Coupled Rapid-Scan Radar Data and Crowd-Sourced Storm Chaser Videography. Oral Presentation, 98th AMS Annual Meeting, 19th Symposium on Meteorological Observation and Instrumentation, Austin, Texas.

Houser, J., A. Seimon, K. J. Thiem, H. B. Bluestein, S. Talbot, J. C. Snyder, J. T. Allen, 2018: Novel Confirming Ground-Up Tornadogenesis in the 2013 El Reno Tornado. Poster Presentation, 29th Conference on Severe Local Storms, Stowe, Vermont.

Seimon, A., L. Orf, J. B. Houser, J. T. Allen, S. Talbot, J. C. Snyder, and H. B. Bluestein, 2018: Genesis and Structure of the 2013 El Reno, Oklahoma Tornado: Comparison of Cloud Model Simulations and Ground-Truth Observations. Poster Presentation, 29th Conference on Severe Local Storms, Stowe, Vermont.

Allen, J. T., A. Seimon, T. Seimon and S. Talbot, 2016: Crowd-Sourcing the Storm: A New Approach for Obtaining and Collating Scientific Tornado Observations. Oral Presentation, 18th Symposium on Meteorological Observation and Instrumentation, 96th AMS Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Seimon, A, S. Talbot, J. T. Allen, and T. Seimon, 2016: TED: The Tornado Environment Display, An Online Visualization Tool Utilizing Storm Chaser Imagery To Inform Severe Storm Research Poster Presentation, 28th AMS Conference on Severe Local Storms, Portland, Oregon.

Witt, A., Burgess, D. W., Seimon A. and J. T. Allen, 2015: Rapid-scan dual-polarization WSR-88D observations of an Oklahoma hailstorm producing extremely-large hail. Poster Presentation, 8th AMS Conference on Radar Meteorology, September 14-18, Norman, Oklahoma.

Witt, A., Burgess, D. W., Seimon A. and J. T. Allen, 2015: Rapid-scan dual-polarization WSR-88D observations of an Oklahoma hailstorm producing extremely-large hail. Conference Preprint, 8th AMS Conference on Radar Meteorology, Norman, Oklahoma. 6pp.

Seimon, A., J. T. Allen, T. Seimon, E. Edwards, S. Talbot and D. Hoadley, 2014: The El Reno Survey Project: Crowd-sourced Database Development, Synchronous Photogrammetric Observations and 3-D Mapping of the Largest Documented Tornado. Oral Presentation, 27th AMS Conference on Severe Local Storms, Madison, Wisconsin.

Allen, J. T., and Seimon, A, 2014: Crowd-sourcing for obtaining data on an extreme tornado: A new model informing meteorological research. Oral Presentation, World Weather Open Science Conference 2014, Montreal, QC, Canada.