New technology at ULM warns about storms before they strike

In Northeast Lousiana, severe weather season is upon us. Dr.Todd Murphy, along with his students at the University of Louisiana Monroe, have been monitoring these conditions with the latest technology.

With the use of a Doppler wind lidar, students are able to go out in the field and track severe weather as it happens. They mount the lidar onto a vehicle and get as close to the storm as possible. Murphy refers to this as a “Mobile Profiling System.”

He said ULM is one of five universities nationwide that use this kind of system. Students are able to track the winds of a storm and identify whether it will form a tornado later in its life cycle.

Having access to the lidar was made possible by a $275,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Dr. Murphy says this technology makes the atmospheric science department at ULM stand out.

“We’re a small program, we’re a small university. So, being able to have research instrumentation like this, that you can really only find at some of the major programs across the country, really gives our students, opportunities that you really can’t get anywhere else,” said Murphy.

Murphy said that his students are very hands-on in the research process.

“I get students who wanna go out and participate in fieldwork. They get an email, or they start getting text messages from me and other students. And so we start to put together various teams of students who either wanna launch weather balloons. We also operate a Dopper Radar, and so students will be looking at the radar data as it comes in.”