Virginia Tech students work to bust tornado myths

BLACKSBURG, VA (WDBJ) -- Last year before the Pulaski tornado even formed, Virginia Tech student and storm chaser, Kathryn Prociv was warning her classmates to take shelter fast.

"We were all awake, we were chatting on the computer, we were following the radar, we knew it was a serious situation" said Kathryn.

But until that April evening last year, most weather experts stuck to the long held belief that horrific tornadoes would break up and weaken as they hit mountain ridges and hillsides.

But Prociv wasn't buying it. Her research showed that sometimes tornadoes actually become long and tight as they drop down a mountainside. Causing the cyclone to spin faster and become meaner. There's evidence that happened in Pulaski. That theory is called "Vorticity Stretching."

"For me I think the biggest goal of my research was to combat that sense of complacency issue again, that tornadoes don't happen in mountains. But my research shows that it can and it does" said Kathryn.

On this day, close to 20 Virginia Tech geography students were loading up for a month long storm chasing expedition through tornado alley.

When asked if vorticity stretching was possible, experts at the National Weather Service said it was something they hadn't looked into.

"It's not something that we've studied closely. We'd observed it, we wondered about it but we hadn't had the time or the effort to put into actually looking at the details" said Steve Keighton, a National Weather Service Meteorologist.