TORUS Project
The Targeted Observation by Radars and UAS of Supercells Project, often shorted to the TORUS Project or just TORUS, is a United States federal government funded meteorological field research project to study various aspects of tornadoes, thunderstorms, and supercells.
The TORUS Project involved over 50 researches from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL), the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations (OMAO), the University of Oklahoma (OU), the Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations (CIWRO), Texas Tech University (TTU), and the University of Colorado Boulder (CU). The TORUS Project was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The TORUS Project covers over 367,000 square miles (950,000 km2), stretching from North Dakota to Texas.
Equipment
The TORUS Project used several different research equipment items:
- 4 Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)
- 2 Ka band mobile radars from Texas Tech University (TTU).
- 9 NSSL Mobile Mesonet Trucks
- 1 X band mobile radar from NSSL and OU (NOXP)
- 1 NSSL Mobile Sounding System
- 2 Radiosonde swarms
- 1 NSSL Mobile LIDAR system
- 1 NOAA Hurricane Hunters's P-3 Orion aircraft
Project results
The results of the TORUS Project have been published in numerous academic papers, included several to the American Meteorological Society. A drone in the TORUS program was featured in the trailer for Twisters.