It took a supercomputer three days to digitally recreate the tornadoes that hit the United States in 2011.
In May 2011, a series of tornadoes struck across the Midwestern United States. The incident sparked scientists to learn how these supercell storms , allowing destructive tornadoes to form.
Lost in the multitude of data and finding it difficult to work with standard methods, the scientists used a super computer, what we would call a supercomputer.
Leigh Orf at the University of Wisconsin-Madison simulated the 2011 storms using the University of Illinois' Blue Water computer and sending out nearly two billion small sensors that spread over an area of more than 75 square miles and rose 12.4 miles high.
The wind speed, temperature, humidity, pressure and rainfall from each sensor were calculated separately and then assembled into a single image, displaying the full dynamics of the tornado. This work took three days and required 20,000 Blue Waters processing cores.
“For the first time, we are able to look inside a supercell storm that produces a tornado,” ORF reports. “We have the full storm, and we can see everything that is happening inside it.”
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