From "The Wizard of Oz" (Dorothy) to "Twister" (cows), the transport of objects by tornado winds has captivated the public.  In this talk I'll discuss the history of scientific research into this phenomenon and its evolution from anecdotal accounts to "dual-pol" radar observations.  I'll focus on the work at the University of Georgia to fuse social media and atmospheric science to create an unprecedented dataset of tornado debris from the April 2011 tornado superoutbreak in the Southeast U.S.   By the end of the talk, you'll know more about the how-big, how-high, how-far of tornado debris, and also why this topic matters to emergency managers as well as meteorologists.


About the Speaker:

Dr. John Knox is Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor of Geography and Undergraduate Coordinator of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia, where he just completed his 20th year on the UGA faculty.  He received a B.S. in mathematics with honors in interdisciplinary studies from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and was a post-doctoral fellow in climate dynamics at Columbia University and the NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies.  He has published over 60 peer-reviewed research and education articles, with his research spanning subjects from clear-air turbulence forecasting to innovations in classroom teaching. Knox is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), a recipient of the 2020 Edward N. Lorenz Teaching Excellence Award from the AMS, and was also a recipient of the 2010 T. Theodore Fujita Research Achievement Award from the National Weather Association.