Storm Chasers🌪️ | Weird But True! | S1 E2 | Full Episode | @natgeokids

hey guys charlie here today we're hanging out in Colorado somewhere near Boulder and we're hanging out with our friends from the center for severe weather research I think they're here right now good luck hanging out with some Storm Chasers and start your day we're hoping for a giant storm let's go chase it down [Music] [Music] I don't know Caribou is a pretty cool trust me this is gonna just gonna be bumping what's up guys I'm Charlie I'm okay we're so excited that you're here all right check it out the most frustrating thing just happened the worst just like 10 minutes ago we were outside in front getting ready to go to the beach we had everything we needed we were ready to go umbrella check sunscreen check goggles check ready to roll it's raining no is that a tornado warning no we gotta get inside quick until this thing passes come on it's storming outside tornado sirens I just want to go to the beach that's definitely not happening I know so we just got robbed of a beach day and we want to make sure that that never happens again Never So today we're checking out weather but not just any weather the extreme weather the big weather the beef stay breaking plan canceling no outside playing big bad nasty weather today we're unraveling the world of [Music] okay so for the past couple minutes Kirby and I have put some effort into checking out some weather stuff the neatest weather stuff and there's some pretty neat weather stuff out there like Moon bows rainbows that show up at night when the moon's almost full and thunder snow that's a blizzard with tons of thunder and lightning [Music] there are crazy hail storms sandstorms [Music] and the maddest clouds that look like colorful fluffy egg cartons in the sky but what gets us really excited tornadoes and hurricanes crazy strong storm events that are basically the closest thing we have to Mother Nature's sucker punching earth right in the jaw hurricanes and tornadoes are incredibly powerful storm events they're like someone took a normal storm cranked the wind speed up to 11. Force the whole thing into a giant torpedo of Destruction but for real these things are really nothing to mess around with because they can be super dangerous so safety is the number one thing when you're in an area that is experiencing a hurricane or a tornado so instead of freaking out about the fact that there's a tornado warning going on outside Kirby and I decided to cope by doing what we do best a little research first up tornadoes don't just happen during any storm they happen during supercell thunderstorms cool science word super thunderstorms they're really intense to Aster storms that have swirling Columns of air in the middle that kind of look like this that swirling wind area is called the mesocyclone when there's really low air pressure the mesocyclone starts making its way to the ground mixing with cold and hot air when the swirling wind Mass touches the ground that's when we've got a tornado on our hands and that's also when we have a tornado warning on our our hands this is how it works first there's a siren then on TV something like this usually shows up if there's a tornado watch that means the weather people think there's a chance that mesocyclone might be touching down sometime soon if there's a tornado warning that means the mesocyclone has touched down there's a tornado somewhere and there could be more so a tornado watch is like a big maybe but a tornado warning is like a heads up man a tornado has been spotted so get to your basement and be safe guys guys this is great but can we please talk about the fact that there are a bunch of different kinds of tornadoes so weird check it out so first you have your standard tornado basic shape swirling wind single cone Etc then you have your land spout kind of like a junior tornado that forms from the ground up water spout tornadoes form over bodies of water multiple vortex tornadoes have more than one touchdown point and my personal favorite a family of tornadoes like a herd of tornadoes thundering across an area all coming from the same Cloud so those are tornadoes tornadoes tornadoes we got them down hurricane time hurricane time let's Dive In hurricanes always start as storms in the middle of the ocean when the temperature gets warm enough winds start pushing the air up and out the air keeps Rising because it's so warm and humid forming this enormous donut-shaped storm that slowly makes its way toward land here's the thing about hurricanes they're massively bigger than tornadoes like 1 000 times bigger one hurricane can cover the entire east coast of the United States while tornadoes usually move through just one town at a time if the wind of one of these storms reaches 38 miles per hour weather people call it a tropical depression if those winds boost up to 39 miles per hour it's now a tropical storm and we give it a name like Jeremy or Jillian or Julian or anything else Julian hits 74 miles per hour now he's graduated to Hurricane status congrats Julian we're so proud of you you big old hurricane yeah but we want to know how to predict these bad boys like we know that tornadoes come from supercell thunderstorms and hurricanes come from warm humid air over the ocean but that's not really enough to really understand these things we need to become weathermen and whether women whether people stick around for a news weather update from ewn the extreme Weather Network 80 chance of fun weather facts heading your way so stick around that was really bad not my best line weird but true waterspouts can lift sea creatures out of the water causing them to rain down from the sky today we're checking out extreme weather tornadoes and hurricanes tornadoes and hurricanes we kind of squared away what they are we want to learn how to predict them we need to become weather people weather people but we found out that if weather's your thing there are a whole bunch of different jobs you can do to study it more than just your television weatherman wait want to check them out I'm game awesome first we'll start out with your television man slash women the people you see on TV on the news are usually meteorologists they study short-term weather like day-to-day weather that might last from a few days to a few weeks they use complex computer models to predict patterns and give us the weather for the week or the night usually presenting it in front of a green screen I'm meteorologist Kirby with the extreme Weather Network so that's a meteorologist but I know that being in front of the camera is not for everyone so for those really smart signs people who get jacked up about global weather maybe climatology is your thing you might want to become a climatologist like Greg over here hey climatologists study climate and you might be thinking weather climate what's the difference well climate is basically just weather averaged over a long period of time while meteorologists study weather over a few days or weeks climatologists study how weather changes over months or years or millions of years they're the ones that track global weather patterns and figure out the ways that humans are affecting the global climate how cool but maybe you're looking for something a little more extreme meteorologists are a little passive climatologists are doing research all the time you're looking for an adrenaline rush a thrill luckily there's a job for people like you this is Cindy hey she is a hurricane hunter that's her legitimate job title that's right as a hurricane hunter she flies planes through actual hurricanes carrying radar and computer equipment Gathering data to help researchers track hurricanes and predict their paths but maybe you don't fly planes like built Bill's a storm chaser that's right Storm Chaser is a title for anyone who likes to find follow or maybe even photograph extreme weather like me Phil like big thunderstorms or hurricanes or even tornadoes some people do this because they like taking pictures of the weather or maybe they do their own research projects or maybe they just do it for the thrill of it oh what's up curb where you been around cool but this still doesn't answer our question right we know about all the jobs but we don't know how to predict the severe weather like when's the next tornado gonna hit or hurricane or the next moon bow not sure if they can predict those but you guys know what we're talking about right we got to talk to someone we need some answers but no worries exactly who LLY who to talk to Karen from the center for severe weather research so when we got on this extreme weather kick we decided to give Josh a call hey Josh it's Kirby hi curb how about coming on over perfect see you in five boom that easy so we're off to the Center for severe weather research to meet up with Josh and Karen you guys want to come along awesome we'll see you in a bit see you soon weird but true worms rain down on a school yard in Louisiana [Music] Hey guys you're just in time today Kirby and I are investigating extreme weather because earlier today there was a tornado warning but check it out it kind of perfect Let's Do It Let's Roll so we're off to Boulder Colorado Colorado means colored red in Spanish and it's a beautiful place to check out wildlife and wild weather Boulder is also where you can find the center for severe weather research the experts here at the cswr study extreme weather like hurricanes tornadoes and blizzards year round NSF National Science Foundation there you go Center for severe weather research got a feeling they're in here hello hey guys Josh Karen I'm Charlie hi hi Josh Karen messages Josh and Karen Josh Karen guys meet Joshua president of the cswr and he's got three degrees from MIT if it's tornado related or has to do with 100 mile per hour winds Joshua's your guy his favorite weird but true fact is that it's nearly impossible to see a rainbow in the sky at full noon thank you what gets you interested in this stuff why weather well we're really interested in things that aren't known so how do tornadoes form how do hurricanes produce severe winds right at the surface there are a lot of questions about whether they just aren't known so have you ever been inside a tornado before inside a weak tornado we've intercepted about 200 some tornadoes with our program and we've only been hit maybe two or three times are you calm are you freaking out because I'd be freaking out inside a tornado it's kind of scary it's very windy stuff shaking around sometimes things are hitting rocks or pieces of buildings things like that are hitting but we've done just fine we're reasonably armored and we stay pretty safe how well can they predict when a tornado is going to hit some things we can predict really well about tornadoes but what we don't know are the precise details so what we're trying to do with all of our equipment is understand the differences between the storms that make tornadoes and the ones that don't so we can forecast them better so what are the best conditions for tornadoes to form so we need warm soupy Air at the surface yeah but that's not enough the second condition is really important a really strong jet stream above that warm soupy air so you get a thunderstorm and the jet stream combined with the winds the surface makes that thunderstorm rotate and it's a rotating thunderstorm that's critical that's a supercell soupy air jet stream supercell amazing weather steamy and then the mystery ingredient and then tornado which is why you're figuring it out right yeah that's right that's right we want to know what's the special sauce what's the mystery ingredient that makes some of those storms make tornadoes we're still looking we're still trying to find out weird but true fact the fastest tornado ever recorded was over 300 miles per hour that's faster than a race car and Josh was the one to measure the average warning for tornadoes now is about 13 minutes and that's much better than it used to be what we're working on is trying to increase the understanding so that we teach the people who are making the future warnings so when the tornado warnings happen everyone's tuckering down you guys are heading out right you're probably already out there yeah we're already out there if you see us pull into your driveway that's a bad sign so we have a whole bunch of different kinds of instruments which we can show you that we drop around the tornadoes show us the way [Music] these are called Tornado pots we have about 20 of these and when a tornadoes coming along we drive right in front and we drop them hopefully the tornado runs them over it's pretty stable the computer that collects all the data is inside this box which is very tough and we measure the wind in the tornado two different ways one with this regular blade this Sonic anemometer is using sound waves to measure the speed of sound in different directions kind of like what a bat puts out fun science word and the nonlinear anemometer it's just a fancy word for a wind speed measurer and then we have cameras looking at the debris flying by in the tornado there's a GPS so we know where it is so how does the information you gathered help people predict future weather we're trying to learn more about what's near the tornadoes and also what's going on inside the tornadoes where we really can't send people so Karen's setting up something that you'll really like when we want to understand how tornadoes form we need to know what the temperatures and humidities are way above the ground so Karen is beginning to prepare a weather balloon yes hi Karen's a bona fide expert in all things wind related she's a big fan of chasing on Storms so if you see weather brewing in Boulder there's a good chance Cairns close by Karen's favorite weird but true fact lightning strikes men more often than women so how high do the weather balloons go they go up to about 60 000 feet telling us what the temperature is like what the winds are like and what their moisture is like through the whole atmosphere so would they be able to tell us if a Storm's cooking today they'll tell us if it's a good environment for a storm to form in one really cool thing about those balloons is they go up and up the balloon gets bigger and bigger and bigger eventually becomes about the size of a house pops this is your balloon a little Dusty laughs bro bro just keep a grip on it it's filling up with tons and tons of helium until it gets massive enough to fly up into space [Music] this thing is going up 60 000 feet we're measuring temperature humidity wind speed wind speed are we doing this ready ready [Music] oh man that thing is moving weird but true the largest known Hailstone in the U.S was about the size of a soccer ball [Music] so what are we seeing here we're looking at the data from the weather balloon you just launched so this blue line here that's your temperature profile so the balloons going up you're seeing that the temperature is decreasing with height and it seems like it hit a real moist layer there so that's probably the cloud how long do you usually track them for it depends on the project you can track on basically until they burst oh man guys launching our very own weather balloon I think there's no way we're topping that one today oh we're gonna talk bad so prepare to be amazed and come see the dolphin on Wheels Doppler on Wheels let's check it out [Music] this is the dazzler unreal it's you it is huge so even though the truck is really cool it's really cool it's the radar on the back so you take this up to severe weather to study tornadoes and hurricanes that really study what's going on inside can we take it for a spin we can yeah yeah come on in let's go [Music] right now we're in their mobile research vehicle to see how to go chase thunderstorms I think we're heading in the right direction thank you once we know our storm's coming we throw down the Hydraulics we fire up the transmitters start the radar Spin and raise the Mast and we're ready to get some data all right Josh looks like the Doppler on Wheels is ready to go right we're parked in the top of a hill we have good visibility all around we have the radar on and scanning and we're watching to see if new storms are developing that's a lot to control does ever go haywire when we're out there on a very fast-paced Mission trying to chase the tornadoes we're coordinating what other teams are doing Drop the pods sometimes teams are launching weather balloons it's a lot to keep track of we don't want anybody hurt so we're trying to keep people just out of Harm's Way and that's what we stay focused on in this mission control truck we're getting as much data as possible but everyone's good to go yes so we're back in the Doppler on Wheels and this is the weather that's happening outside right now right we're watching some rain showers that are over the mountains so we can track them here the green and Bluer areas are areas where it's raining when it gets to be yellow and pink again that's when it's really hard or hell so how far away can this thing reach sometimes we can see 100 miles away right now we're are looking about 40 miles some of these cells are maybe about 20 25 miles away and they're kind of moving in our Direction so right now we're in the storm waiting mode getting ready to go into that storm chasing mode so hopefully it starts heading towards us fingers crossed all right so I'm sure most of you think that storm chasing is really high intensity stuff you're being thrashed around by tornadoes all over the place that's what it is like sometimes but most of the time it's from chasing it's kind of more like storm waiting [Music] yeah I think we should check the radar yeah probably I'll go do it all right [Music] it's a little cool outside the sun's starting to go down today is probably not a great day for severe weather guys so unfortunately we didn't see any storms today but that's all right because we figured out how the actual scientists do their storm chasing we got to kick it back to HQ super quickly because we're almost running out of time and I'm sure Josh and Karen had a lot of super important research to do hold tight we'll see you real soon weird but true bolts of lightning can shoot out of an erupting volcano I don't know man okay guys hey what's up we just got back from the cswr the center for severe weather research we saw all of Josh and Karen's storm weather chasing equipment so we pretty much have it figured out right how to predict these tornadoes what else did we learn today there were so many weird but true things a tropical storm becomes a hurricane when wind speeds 74 miles per hour an anemometer is a tool that can measure the wind speeds of a tornado hurricane Hunters fly planes through hurricanes to study them hey guys it looks pretty clear outside maybe we can go to the beach you go grab the beach stuff I'll double check the weather cool snow storms you see that storm system over lonely forget the Beast stuff we gotta go chase the storm let's do it all right guys we gotta go let's stop by again and we discover more things that are weird but true all right check it out you gotta go this way [Music]

Channel: Nat Geo Kids

Views: 408,582

Keywords: Weird But True Jobs, weird jobs, Wierd jobs, jobs, fun jobs, careers, nat geo careers, explorers, divers, astronaut fashion, National geographic kids, nat geo kids, kids, kid, for kids, National geographic, nat geo, animals, making stuff, educational, skin, Full Episode, Charlie, Kirby, Explore, Storm Chasers, Tornado warning, beach day, real life, Extreme weather, little research in HQ, Colorado, Weird

Id: 5BuDAY-L7mE

Length: 22min 11sec (1331 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023