Helpful Tornado Technology Created by MU Meteorology Student

Meteorology major Nelson Tucker has been interested in the weather since he was a young boy living in Vienna, Virginia. He became "deeply focused" on tornadoes during the next few years, and by high school, they became an obsession.

His passion for tornadoes and desire to help others has led him, along with his brother and two friends, to create the OTUS project, which stands for the Observations of Tornadoes by UAV Systems. The OTUS project is an effort to gather reliable measurements of the environment within and surrounding a tornado to protect lives and property, according to its website.

The Weather Channel

According to Tucker, much of his interest in the weather stems back to The Weather Channel. He even dressed as meteorologist Jim Cantore one Halloween as a child. "I had an inherent interest in weather, so I started watching The Weather Channel a lot," he says. "My general interest was first in storms and hurricanes. Hurricane Sandy came up through this area in 2012, and that event was big for me. My obsession with tornadoes developed after the Super Outbreak in 2011 in the South, when I was 8. By 10, I was fully into tornadoes."

At that same time, Tucker's life was turned upside down when he developed PANDAS (pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections) syndrome and missed half of fifth grade. PANDAS is a rare condition where children suddenly develop obsessive-compulsive disorder or tic disorders or experience a worsening of existing symptoms following a strep infection. It's thought to be an autoimmune response where the body's immune system mistakenly attacks the basal ganglia, a part of the brain, after fighting off the strep infection.

"I was bedridden and unable to walk for half the year," says Tucker. "It took another six months to fully recover." With nothing else to do but rest and heal, he began devouring all things weather- and tornado-related online, including research papers, damage reports and videos. This online research continued and intensified throughout middle school and high school, along with an additional focus on meteorology.

Tornado Talk

During his junior year of high school, Tucker began an association with Tornado Talk, a website devoted to tornado history. There he met his mentor, Jennifer Narramore, the website's owner who had worked as a radio broadcast meteorologist for more than 25 years. He joined the website's efforts to document the stories of people and communities affected by tornadoes as well as the tornadoes themselves.

According to Tornado Talk, at least 22,000 people in the United States have died from tornadoes, based on events that have been documented. Researchers and writers like Tucker have produced more than 550 summaries documenting those deaths, as well as meteorological details about the tornado events and recovery stories. In April 2020, he began writing summaries for the website; in June, his first summary was published on the Smithville MS-AL EF5 from the 2011 Super Outbreak.

"Three of us did cross-country trips to talk with people and document things," Tucker says. "I probably wrote at least a half million words of summary in four years."

His work with Tornado Talk had a significant impact on him in several ways.

As someone on the autism spectrum, Tucker struggled with socializing. "It took until high school for me to be comfortable talking with unfamiliar people," he says. "It was a huge leap when I began connecting with folks through Tornado Talk, especially talking with survivors. It was the scariest thing when I first started doing it, but it helped me develop and grow and overcome barriers."

Tucker also began to feel the strong need to help prevent such deaths from occurring by contributing to improvements in the warning process. "Tornado Talk became a huge part of my life," he explains, "and it gave me a lot of exposure to the human aspect. That was critical for what I am doing with OTUS. Part of my emotional response was wanting to mitigate harm from tornadoes due to the people I talked to."

Millersville University

Tucker is in his last year as a student at Millersville University. He expects to graduate in May 2026 with a B.S. in meteorology and minors in journalism and emergency management.

"The biggest draw for me was the excellent meteorology program's reputation and good professors," he says. "It is a small enough department that you can connect one-on-one with professors but still large enough to enjoy the benefits of a good program. I also found the size of the school and campus overall appealing." He says he has come to appreciate having helpful advisors, top-notch meteorologists and really good professors with whom he can interact and consult.

During the summer of 2024, Tucker was a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), one of the nation's oldest physical science laboratories, located in Gaithersburg, Maryland. After working to expand their database of critical facilities struck by tornadoes, he and researchers at NIST began a project that involved developing a better wind sensor, one that could measure the strength of the vertical component of a tornado. That's what pulls objects like cars and trailers into the air, according to Tucker.

"We developed an air sensor to measure wind speed with the drone," Tucker explains. "With NIST, the goal was to create an omnidirectional wind sensor."

That work is nearly complete, and Tucker expects a report to be released by NIST. The collaboration between Tucker, OTUS and NIST will continue later this summer, when they partner to conduct tests on wind tunnel calibrations.

OTUS

Tucker, his older brother Louis and friend Tanner Beard are the founders of OTUS. "All three of us decided in February 2024 - on a midnight call - to do the project," Tucker says. They later added tornado chaser Erik Fox to the team. Their work has been featured in Forbes twice in the past few months.

Tucker serves as president and "was behind the mission/purpose/reason that we created OTUS," he explains, "but the brains behind the drone technology are Louis and Tanner. It is interdisciplinary, a combination of engineering from them and meteorology from me. OTUS would not exist or be possible without all three of us."

Louis, the drone builder and ops coordinator, learned about the challenges researchers face when gathering data near/inside a tornado and figured that the OTUS concept was possible with the right engineering expertise. So, he pulled in Tanner Beard, a friend he knew through drone racing who had recently graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering.

Less than three months after OTUS was born, Louis flew the first drone inside a tornado.

"Drones get you measurements in places where you couldn't put a person or another instrument," says Tucker. "They aren't stuck on the ground. They can reach any part of a tornado, and nobody's in harm's way with the operator miles away."

What makes tornadoes particularly dangerous is that they are three-dimensional - they have that vertical component - and they can change fast. OTUS provides data that can be used in several different ways.

From a structural standpoint, OTUS is needed to get real-world observations for the effect of tornadoes on buildings so construction standards can be improved.

Regarding forecasting and providing adequate warning, there is still a lot of mystery around the genesis and dissipation of tornadoes, according to Tucker. "We have the general idea of how they form, with the main theories that are debated focusing on temperature, humidity and pressure," he says. "With a better understanding of what's going on inside and outside of tornadoes, we could create models to better predict them. Getting these measurements with OTUS allows us to understand tornadoes better and improve warnings."

The other aspect of OTUS which is important is that it provides a look at advancing technology: What's the world going to look like with drones?

"Drones are only getting cheaper with time, so the affordability of data collection is on track to keep becoming better. In the short term, we can get measurements in places previously impossible and inform the science. In the long term, drones could be so easily acquired and used in large numbers that it could revolutionize data collection on tornadoes in meteorology," says Tucker.

Tucker strongly suspects that collecting data through drones is something he'll do for many years to come. His plans after Millersville include graduate school; he's looking for places where he can continue his focus on tornadoes and meteorology. He'll work this fall on beginning the steps he needs to take to prepare for the future.

"OTUS has definitely inserted itself into my future plans," Tucker says. "I always wanted to go to grad school and get a Ph.D. OTUS is becoming the obvious focus of that work."