Tornado hunters

Surely many of you watched the 1996 Tornado (Twister) movie with the wonderful Helen Hunt in the lead role. This film at one time struck me as the occupation of "tornado catchers", completely distant from my usual office-plankton life, and the most beautiful views, when deadly darkness approaches the brightly lit landscape. By the way, Tornado has become the world's first Hollywood film released on a DVD. Remember this late 20th century format? However, there are real tornado hunters. Perhaps their work is not as dramatic as that of the film’s heroes, and they do not have to tie themselves with chains to water pipes so as not to be carried away by the wind. Although to play catch-up with a dangerous whirlwind for sure.

Last year, scientists working on the large-scale research project Vortex2 had more than 50 Lenovo laptops, 8 ThinkCentre desktops, ThinkVision monitors and many additional devices - flash drives and external hard drives with automatic data encryption. All this is used in the toughest conditions: powerful mobile computers are installed in trucks, which are the basis for powerful Doppler radars, and on light ThinkPad X-series researchers work "in the field", assessing the damage caused. And recently, researchers have received for testing new (not yet officially submitted) ThinkCentre M90z monoblocks with touch screens. Both the laptops used in the Vortex2 project and their applications are unusual, and I will tell you more about this.


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The headquarters of the Vortex2 Tornado Research project is located in Colorado, and several large American research centers participate in it, including the Center for the Study of Complex Weather Conditions (CSWR), Texas Technical University, the University of Colorado, and so on. This interaction was required because of the scale of the project: storms and tornadoes are being monitored simultaneously using 10 mobile radars. Cooperation with Lenovo began in May last year, and on June 15 (very soon), the last phase of research under the Vortex2 project will end. Just recently, researchers have recorded a new record for the speed of a storm wind - 407 kilometers per hour. Here is a short video story of how tornado researchers work:



Lenovo's equipment is installed on CSWR mobile Doppler radars, and there it is used in almost all aspects of the team’s activities.



The powerful ThinkCentre M58p desktop PCs are used to process data from a mobile radar installation. In fact, the success of the entire project, and sometimes the lives of researchers, depends on their stable work. According to the data obtained from the radar, they estimate how close you can get to the storm, so that neither the equipment nor the people will suffer.



ThinkPad W700 mobile workstations are used for processing the received data, as well as for their subsequent demonstration at conferences. In addition to information received from the radar, the researchers are filming simultaneously from several points, resulting in terabytes of video. ThinkPad W700 is also used to process this vast array of data.



This is not an ordinary ThinkPad T400. It has a matte high brightness display (680 nits) for outdoor use. The viewpoint allows you to estimate the viewing angles of the screen. Similar screens for “field conditions” are installed on 12-inch ThinkPad X200t and X201t tablets, but only on special order.



Lenovo has already sent CSWR devices to researchers before they go on sale. At one time, they were the first to get thin, but very reliable ThinkPad T400s laptops. Apparently, the transfer process was accompanied by the words “And do not deny yourself anything,” so the result was the following video:



And so:



As rightly noted at the very beginning of the first video, "Do not try to repeat this at home." All ThinkPad notebooks are tested for compliance with the US military standard MIL-STD 810F. Each model is tested under conditions of low pressure (height over 4.5 kilometers), high humidity (up to 95%), vibration, high and low temperatures (from -20 to +60 degrees including a sharp change in temperature conditions within one test), and also on dust resistance. The ThinkPad T400s successfully passed all of the above tests, although the most difficult tests for shock load and work at high altitude pass only the model with a solid-state drive.



This year, tornado hunters are testing the ThinkCentre M90z monoblocks. Lenovo has not yet officially introduced this model, but an exception has been made for researchers. The fact is that the M90z is probably one of the most mobile computers that are stationary. Not all tasks can be performed even on a 17-inch laptop display, but here scientists have a 23-inch screen with FullHD resolution and MultiTouch support. The touch panel allows you to do without a keyboard when viewing images recorded by radars and cameras. In this video you can see a small cut of photos about the use of the ThinkCenter M90z by CSWR researchers (for now, only in English). And in this video (with Russian subtitles) describes the creation of a new monoblock ThinkCentre.

The tasks for the VORTEX2 team are very ambitious. More than a hundred researchers involved in the project want to know the causes of tornadoes, find out why some tornadoes do not cause damage and quickly disappear, while others destroy cities and there are many hours. Currently, residents of "dangerous" in terms of the appearance of tornado areas have an average of 13 minutes to find refuge. 70% of such warnings turn out to be false. The task of Vortex2 is to improve the accuracy of forecasts and distribute them at least half an hour before the appearance of a real danger. By the way, in this blog you can read the latest news about the work on the project. The field research period ends 10 days later, then scientists will process the data, and then new projects that will also use Lenovo laptops and personal computers.