Fun Fact on How the Twister Riddle was Solved by Crowdsourcing

An avid book reader, National Geographical Explorer, and a leading atmospheric & environmental scientist, Anton Seimon was very much interested in exploring the dynamics and formation of tornadoes since his childhood. Despite conducting various researches, the scientific community was still not sure whether the tornadoes formed from the ground up or sky down. Being a keen reader of all books related to storms, mountaineering, and volcanoes, he never thought that his childhood fascination will later become his adult vocation.  

The recent scientific advancements helped much in understanding the dynamics of tornadoes. They emerged as the offshoot of a massive air system that was a part of a rotating thunderstorm named a supercell storm. The most believed concept was that tornadoes were formed when warm air rose to colder air in a storm cloud above it. Inside the massive supercell cloud, it was believed that variable directions and wind speeds encourage warmer air to rotate. Once the warmer air gain significant strength, they would re-emerge through the cloud’s base layer and extend down to the ground. However, no one was certain regarding this earlier accepted wisdom.

In a bid to find out whether tornadoes form from sky down or ground up, Anton Seimon’s team reached people through social media that might have seen the biggest recorded tornado that formed in Oklahoma, 2013. Normally, a tornado ranges till 100 metres, but this massive tornado was spread 4kms across. It even claimed the lives of Anton’s teammates and friends.

The desire to gain precise clarity on tornado formation took on an element of severe personal debt to their sacrifice and memory. The team wanted to get it cleared because with greater understanding, one can always give the best advice and the trajectory predictions can turn out to be more accurate than ever. All this can result in reduced percentage of loss of life and damage.

When asked from residents who witnessed the tornado in El Reno, Oklahoma, it was revealed that they saw the tornado starting from ground up, which was the exact opposite to the widely accepted or believed wisdom. In this way, crowdsourcing managed to put an end to the early believed tornado formation theories and gave a better clarity that was further used for future researches.