“If you feel it, chase it,” was the tagline for “Twisters,” a 2024 blockbuster film centered around a group of storm chasers who study tornadoes. And for students at Ohio State, the opportunity to chase and study these storms will soon be a reality.

The Department of Geography, led by a proposal from Associate Professor Jana Houser and in collaboration with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will soon acquire a $1.75-million truck-mounted mobile weather radar, a state-of-the-art tool that will be available for faculty research and hands-on teaching for students.

Houser and the Department of Geography are funding the equipment through a Good-to-Great grant sponsored by the Office of Academic Affairs. Houser’s proposal was one of nine chosen for funding along with five others from the College of Arts and Sciences.

“I've wanted a radar for years,” Houser said. “I saw the call for the Good-to-Great proposals, and it was well-aligned with this idea of making a research instrument tangible to a large array of students - undergraduate and graduate students.”

The radar, called SKYLER-III, is being built by Collins Aerospace, an American technology company that specializes in aerospace and defense products, and is expected to be on campus by winter 2026. Ohio State will be the first to utilize specialized technology from this third iteration of Collins Aerospace’s radar that will provide localized high-resolution weather data.

“It has the unique ability to simultaneously collect 3D data very quickly, and also detect details that help us determine information such as the general size, shape and type of precipitation at that location,” Houser said. “For example, we can differentiate between regions of hail, rain, snow, tornado debris and insects.

“It provides us a really cool opportunity to help us advance the state of the science in severe weather research, which is my area of expertise.”

Students will have the opportunity to work with SKYLER-III as part of their curriculum. Houser, who teaches meteorology and weather forecasting classes, is designing a course for atmospheric science students (and others that may be interested) that would take them out in the field collecting data from SKYLER-III. Houser used that field experience, including over 20 years of chasing storms, while helping track down storms with filmmakers for “Twisters,” driving the film crew to help them obtain footage for the movie.

“That was really cool,” she said. “My role was to go out with a film crew so that we could shoot video of sky scenes and things that were real storms and potentially tornadic storms, and they could insert it at various different spots throughout the movie.”

Houser also expects SKYLER-III to have a significant impact on her research. One key question this equipment could help to answer is determining the exact timeframe for when a storm may produce a tornado.

“We don't really know the answer to that, so ideally, using this radar and probably coupling this radar with another similar radar, we can construct analyses that help us understand the sources for rotation that ultimately lead to the formation of the tornado,” she said. “Then we can also differentiate fine-scale details within the storm itself that might separate storms capable of producing tornadoes from those that aren't.”

As part of her work, Houser will have the opportunity to collaborate with the National Weather Service in the event of severe weather, with the radar able to provide updates on what local storms are doing to better inform decision making for storm warnings.

SKYLER-III will likely also be used as an outreach tool for the Department of Geography and Ohio State. Given the on-wheels nature of the radar, Houser will also be able to take the radar on the road, with Columbus’ Center of Science and Industry (COSI) and local elementary schools among the expected stops to get kids engaged with meteorology.

“It's super exciting. There's not a lot of universities in the country that have access to any kind of mobile radar in the first place, not to mention a brand new state-of-the-art one like this,” Houser said. “Oftentimes, especially in the field of meteorology, kids are inspired to want to do it from a very early age. This is an opportunity to have those touch points inspire a new generation of upcoming scientists.”