NCAR hosted a post V2 Press Conference on June 24, 2009 at the Foothills Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. Four local TV stations, the Denver Post newspaper, AP, and a radio station were represented.

Josh Wurman opened the press conference with an overview of 2009 VORTEX2 operations. Valuable data sets were collected on supercell thunderstorms that did not spawn tornadoes in Lamar, Colorado (possible small tornado), Dodge City, Kansas, and in northwest Missouri. Why supercell thunderstorms do NOT produce tornadoes is one of the big questions VORTEX2 hopes to answer.

David Dowell followed with a short presentation on the tornado intercepted in Goshen County. He reported the EF-2 tornado had an estimated 130mph winds – measured by the mobile Doppler radars part of VORTEX2. The tornado did snap power poles, but caused no injuries and no other damage. The storm was targeted early and data collection began 20 minutes before the tornado touched down. Its relatively long life of 25-30 minutes and varied sizes allowed for a fascinating case.

Roger Wakimoto wrapped up with the human side of the experiment – talking about his credit card statement with gas station after gas station listed, the 10,000 miles he put on his rental car, and how the numbers of students involved was unprecedented. He also said he was not surprised there was only one tornado intercept saying,”history repeated itself,” referring to the first year of the original VORTEX project when only one tornado was documented.
The media is always interested in results, and asked when the public could expect to see something. Wakimoto said results take a long time, with papers still being published on VORTEX data collected in 1994-1995 as an example. He also said studies show results from data gathered in a large field project peak around the 4th or 5th year following the experiment. Preliminary will results start trickling in during year 1, and “we are all clawing at the data,” but research takes time.