Tornado Chasers on Science Friday... *Swoon* -

Storm chasers. Every 10-year-old in the Midwest dreams of being one (or was that just me?). They’re the Indiana Joneses of weather geeks – risking their lives on high speed pursuits to investigate strange and dangerous phenomena.

Okay, maybe I’m romanticizing it a bit, but what they discover by tracking tornadoes just might end up saving lives!

That’s why I was excited to listen to last week’s Science Friday podcast, in which host Ira Flatow interviewed tornado researchers, including the folks from the VORTEX 2 (Verification Of Rotation in Tornadoes EXperiment 2) project. Fascinating stuff.

If you – like me – want to ~~swoon over the dashingly adventurous scientistists~~, I mean learn how researchers are improving tornado prediction, give a listen to last week’s SciFri.

photo via NOAA