In the 1970s, scientists at the Environmental Research Lab in Boulder, Colorado, started researching infrasound and geophysical signatures. A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that extends down from the base of a thunderstorm to the ground. "A severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado is located 5 kilometres south of Laurel, moving northeast at 55 km/h." Bedard said they operated on fumes the second year of the experiment and then just had to stop. Great mystery. Houser explains that radar can't always detect tornadoes because tornadoes are frequently so low level -- below 1 kilometer off the ground in the atmosphere -- and radar essentially aims at an up angle above the horizon. For the past four years during tornado season, Waxler's team has taken Bedard's old microphone concept and beefed it up, putting out about 10 microphone arrays through northern Alabama and Mississippi. …
"How the rest of the work on this technology plays out depends somewhat on funding. If this was the case, perhaps meteorologists would be able to learn when a tornado was on the ground with certainty and speed, and not just depend on eye witnesses or suggestive indicators via radar. Elbing talked about solving other riddles, as well, like the direction of wind patterns, which can affect how and where sounds are picked up. The tornado warning was issued at … About 10 years ago, he received funding to study tornadoes and infrasound after his boss Henry Bass, who'd been working on a separate theory of how to detect tornadoes using microphones, passed away. And the speed of tornadoes -- as fast as 60 miles an hour -- makes accurate and timely warnings a matter of life and death for those in the storm's path. After decades of languishing from a lack of attention and funding, research into sound waves far below the range of human hearing could help forecasters detect when a tornado touches down, rather than relying on visual reports from people on the ground. Down the line, he envisions having lots of arrays and better tools for modeling factors like wind direction, but that aid hasn't arrived yet. It's a violent event." of tornadoes—often during thunderstorms. There are other audible sounds to listen for besides a roar that could signal the approach of a tornado. But there's still a key mystery that researchers have yet to solve before they can say with full certainty that a system like this would work: They don't know what exactly in a tornado emits the infrasonic signature. One way to distinguish this sound from ordinary thunderstorm sounds is to notice a loud continuous roar or rumble, that, unlike thunder, doesn't fade in a few seconds. Think of how loud wind sounds when you are driving down the highway with your car window down, except multiply that by several hundred times. In 2017, they picked up a signal from a small tornado about eight minutes before it actually formed near Perkins, Oklahoma, roughly 20 miles away. One day, this technology could be part of a warning system that could clue forecasters into the presence of a tornado as much as 50 miles away. So he decided to find out.Waxler is a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Mississippi specializing in acoustics, including atmospheric sound propagation. What sound you hear depends on several things, including the tornado's size, strength, what it is hitting, and how close it is to you. While knowing what a tornado sounds like may help keep you safe should one hit, you shouldn't rely on the storm's sound as your Sounds of Thunderstorm, available for Dovnload in MP3 format.