VORTEX2: The final season

Yesterday, the second season of the VORTEX2 tornado research project officially began. From their website:

VORTEX2 is by far the largest and most ambitious effort ever made to understand tornadoes. We expect over 100 scientists and over 40 science and support vehicles to participate in this unique, fully nomadic, field program during its second and last field season, May/June 2010. The National Science Foundation (NSF) foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are contributing over $10 million towards this effort. Participants will again be drawn from over a dozen universities, and several government and private organizations. International participants will be drawn from Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and Australia.

The playground for the VORTEX2 project is a wide swath of the central United States, reaching from northern Texas, to northern South Dakota, and over into central Iowa. For the next month and a half, the armada of VORTEX2 mobile labs, trucks, cars, and Doppler on Wheels (DOW) vehicles will be roaming this area to gain a better understanding of how tornadoes form.

If you enjoy listening to storm reports on DMX MICRN or over Skywarn frequencies, then you’ll enjoy listening in on the VORTEX2 frequencies. The organizers of the project felt comfortable enough to be open with the public to publish the project’s operating manual online, which includes the frequency plan for the project. This doesn’t mean it’s ok to interfere with their project in any way, shape, or form. Period.

Because most of these frequencies are simplex (not using a repeater), you’ll probably need to be within a decent range to hear them. The only channel that will be utilized by a repeater is NSSL 2 (165.4375) and that channel will be used to coordinate vehicles.

National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL)
163.1000 – NSSL 1 (Simplex)
165.4375 – NSSL 2 (Duplex)
161.1000 – NSSL 3 (Simplex)

Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR)/Doppler on Wheels (DOW)
161.5000 – Radar Team Coordination 1
161.4000 – Radar Team Coordination 2
151.9400 – DOW/Telemetry 1
151.8200 – DOW/Telemetry 2
158.4000 – CSWR/DOW

Research teams
161.3000 – Tornado Pod teams 1 – used for DOW to Tornado Intercept Vehicle (TIV) communications
161.2000 – Tornado Pod teams 2
151.7000 – Mobile Mesonet teams 1
151.7600 – Mobile Mesonet teams 2
161.0000 – StickNet teams 1
160.9000 – StickNet teams 2
160.8500 – Unmanned Aerial Surveillance (UAS) Team
160.8000 – Weather balloon teams