Mobile radar observation of tornadoes

In the late 1900s, mobile doppler weather radars were designed and created with the goal to study atmospheric phenomena.

[1] Mobile doppler weather radars have been used on dozens of scientific and academic research projects from their invention in the late 1900s.

[1] One problems facing meteorological researchers was the fact that mesonets and other ground-based observation methods were being deployed too slow in order to accurately measure and study high-impact atmospheric phenomena.

[4][5][6] In 2013, researchers published to the American Meteorological Society that RaXPol was created because “the need for rapidly scanning weather radars for observing fast-changing weather phenomena such as convective storms, microbursts, small-scale features in hurricanes, and the process of convective development has been well established” throughout history.

[10] In 2023, the University of Oklahoma, along with the National Severe Storms Laboratory developed and deployed the first ever mobile phased array radar (HORUS).

A Doppler on Wheels radar loop of a hook echo and associated mesocyclone in Goshen County, Wyoming on June 5, 2009 . Strong mesocyclones show up as adjacent areas of yellow and blue (on other radars, bright red and bright green), and usually indicate an imminent or occurring tornado.