Storm Chasing Meteorology
Learn to read towering storm clouds, interpret live Doppler radar, and safely position yourself near tornadic supercells. Build the core meteorological knowledge required to understand and chase severe weather.
Like Duolingo, but for Storm Chasing Meteorology. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
24 levels across 4 sections, about 48 minutes end to end, roughly 10 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Reading the Sky in the Field, Mobile Radar and Tactical Navigation, The Severe Weather Recipe, and Vortex Evolution and Chase Realities. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in Storm Chasing Meteorology
- The dark, flat cloud base with no rain falling beneath it is the storm's main updraft intake
- Warm, humid surface air rushes upward into the storm at the rain-free base
- Tornadoes and wall clouds descend from the rain-free updraft base, not from the heavy rain core
- Grooves and striations carved around the main updraft tower show twisting air currents
- A rotating updraft turns an ordinary storm into a supercell
- Smooth, untextured clouds indicate air simply rising straight up without spin
- The forward flank dumps massive curtains of rain and giant hail to the north and east
- Rain and hail are cast away from the updraft, keeping the southern flank rain-free and visible
- Approaching from the rain core blocks your visual line of sight and puts you in damaging hail
- Shelf clouds look dramatic and scary, but they mark outflow pushing away from the storm
- Tornadic features feed on inflow, pulling warm air inward and upward toward the center
- Feeling a blast of cold wind means outflow has arrived, signaling the storm is venting, not sucking in
- Beaver tails and inflow bands are flat streams of condensation marking rivers of warm air feed
- These bands point like direct arrows into the storm's rotating updraft base
- They indicate the storm is actively consuming lots of warm, humid surface air
- Scud clouds are detached, ragged, and drift loosely past the storm
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives Storm Chasing Meteorology the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
What kind of air rushes upward into the storm at the rain-free base?
Get it right to open this lesson and 23 more in the app.
Where Storm Chasing Meteorology takes you
- 1
Reading the Sky in the Field
- Visual Anatomy of a Supercell
- Spotting Wall Clouds and Imminent Rotation
- 2
Mobile Radar and Tactical Navigation
- Interpreting Mobile Radar Signatures
- Positioning and Escape Strategy
- 3
The Severe Weather Recipe
- Atmospheric Ingredients for Tornadogenesis
- Targeting the Initiation Zone
- 4
Vortex Evolution and Chase Realities
- The Tornado Life Cycle
- Field Hazards and Chaser Ethics
4 sections · 8 units · 24 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
Storm Chasing Meteorology is taught in the The Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start Storm Chasing Meteorology today.
Download Tomo, search Storm Chasing Meteorology, and play your first lesson in under a minute.