Tornado hunters

I'm sure many of you watched the movie " Tornado » (Twister) in 1996 with a remarkable Helen Hunt in the lead role. This film once struck me as the occupation of "tornado catchers", completely far from my usual office-planktonic life, and the most beautiful views, when deadly darkness was approaching the landscape brightly shined with the sun. By the way, "Tornado" was the first ever Hollywood movie released on a DVD-ROM. Remember this format of the late 20th century? However, there are real hunters for tornadoes. Maybe their work is not as dramatic as the heroes of the film, and they do not have to tie themselves with chains to water pipes so as not to be carried away by the wind. Although playing catch-up with a dangerous whirlwind is probably a must.

Last year, scientists working on a large-scale research project Vortex2 got at their disposal 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 most severe conditions: powerful mobile computers are installed in trucks, which are the basis for powerful Doppler radars, and on the light ThinkPad X-series, researchers work “in the field”, assessing the damage caused. And recently, researchers received new (not yet officially announced) ThinkCentre M90z all-in-ones with touch screens. Both the laptops used in the Vortex2 project and their application are unusual, and I will tell you more about this.





The headquarters of the Vortex2 Tornado Research project is located in the state of Colorado, and several large American research centers participate in it, including the Center for the Study of Complex Weather Conditions (CSWR), Texas Tech University, the University of Colorado and so on. Such interaction was required because of the scale of the project: storms and tornadoes are simultaneously monitored using 10 mobile radars. Collaboration 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 the other day, researchers recorded a new record for the speed of a storm wind - 407 kilometers per hour. Here's a quick video on how tornado researchers work:



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



The ThinkCentre M58p powerful 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 received from the radar, they estimate how close you can get closer to the storm so that neither equipment nor people are affected.



ThinkPad W700 mobile workstations are used to process received data, as well as for their subsequent demonstration at conferences. In addition to the information received from the radars, the researchers are filming simultaneously from several points, receiving as a result terabytes of video. The ThinkPad W700 is also used to process this huge array of data.



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



Lenovo more than once passed the CSWR device to researchers before they went on sale. At one time, they were the first to receive thin, but highly reliable ThinkPad T400s laptops. Apparently, the transfer process was accompanied by the words "And do not deny yourself anything," so the result was this video:



And here it is:



As rightly noted at the very beginning of the first video, “Do not try to repeat this at home.” All ThinkPad laptops are tested for compliance with the US military standard MIL-STD 810F. Each model is tested under conditions of low pressure (altitude more than 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 in one test), and also dustproof. The ThinkPad T400s has successfully passed all of these tests, although only a solid state drive model passes particularly sophisticated tests for shock load and high-altitude operation.



This year, tornado hunters are testing the ThinkCentre M90z all-in-one. Lenovo has not yet officially introduced this model, but an exception has been made for researchers. The fact is that the M90z is perhaps one of the most mobile computers that are stationary at the same time. Not all tasks can be performed even on a 17-inch laptop display, but here scientists have at their disposal a 23-inch screen with FullHD resolution and MultiTouch support. The touch panel allows you to do without a keyboard when viewing images captured by radar and cameras. In this video, you can watch a small cut of photos about the use of ThinkCenter M90z researchers CSWR (so far - only in English). And in this video(with Russian subtitles) tells about 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 find out 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 the “dangerous” areas, in terms of the appearance of tornadoes, have an average of 13 minutes to find refuge. 70% of such warnings turn out to be false. The goal of Vortex2 is to increase the accuracy of forecasts and distribute them at least half an hour before the appearance of a real danger. By the way, in this blogYou can read the latest news about working on the project. Field research period ”ends in 10 days, then scientists will deal with the processing of the data, and then with new projects that will also use Lenovo laptops and personal computers.