Climate & Environment

Where does your food come from? First-of-a-kind map tracks journey across thousands of miles

Yvaine Ye — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 16:17:42 +0000

Where does your food come from? First-of-a-kind map tracks journey across thousands of miles Yvaine Ye Thu, 07/24/2025 - 10:17

Yvaine Ye

If extreme rainfall wiped out all food growing in Jalisco, a Pacific coastal state in western Mexico, it would eliminate enough calories to feed 765,000 people in the United States. A widespread drought in the Brazilian state of Paraná could cut enough fat to meet needs of more than 1.7 million people in Egypt. Western Australia’s next major heatwave could knock out enough protein to feed 8 million people in China.

These are some of many insights revealed by a newly launched interactive tool called the Global Food Twin. Developed by �� Boulder data scientist Zia Mehrabi and his collaborators at Earth Genome, a non-profit organization, the interactive digital map shows how food moves from farm to table. It offers a first-of-its kind view into the world’s highly connected and increasingly fragile food system.

Explore the global food twin

“This is a landmark effort, because no one’s ever done this at this scale and level of detail,” said Mehrabi, assistant professor of environmental studies and founder of �� Boulder’s Better Planet Laboratory, which leverages data science to address some of the leading global environmental and human rights issues. “We’re able to represent the complexity of our food system, showing people a window into a world they haven’t seen before.”

As climate change continues to put pressure on global food production and supply chains, the team hopes the data could help countries better anticipate and prepare for disruptions like droughts and floods, ensuring communities maintain food access in the face of hazards.

Food hubs

The team built the map using data on agricultural yields of common foods—including grains, meats and vegetables. They also accounted for consumer demand, trade records, transportation networks, and satellite ship-tracking data from around the world.

With the Global Food Twin, users can look up how common agricultural food groups, from grains to oil to fresh produce, travel from where they’re produced to consumers in more than 3,700 states and provinces across 240 countries. The team also calculated the calories and essential nutrients, such as protein and iron, that flow through the trades.

Zia Mehrabi (Credit: Patrick Campbell/�� Boulder)

The map is an expansion on Mehrabi’s pioneering project visualizing the U.S. food system. It revealed that just 5.5% of U.S. counties produce half of the nation’s crops.

The global version paints a similar picture. Only 1.2% of sub-national administrative units, such as states, provinces and districts, supply 50% of the world’s grains.

For example, India’s Uttar Pradesh supplies 17 gigatons of grains annually. Together with other food products the state grows, Uttar Pradesh alone provides enough calories for more than 22 million people, including close to half a million in the United States.

“Many people think the U.S. can stand alone when it comes to food supply, and we can call the shots on trade agreement. But this map illustrates that even a powerhouse like the U.S. relies heavily on imports,” Mehrabi said, adding that many food items that Americans enjoy daily almost all come from other countries.

Take bananas. Almost every banana in U.S. grocery stores comes from countries like Guatemala, Ecuador and Mexico. Coffee, aside from a small amount grown in Hawaii, mainly comes from Brazil, Colombia and Vietnam.

“This map shows very clearly how connected we are with each other when it comes to food, something many consumers don’t think about when they’re eating a banana,” Mehrabi said.

Choke points

The map also highlights the growing vulnerability of global food systems to climate change. Many critical trade corridors, such as the Mississippi River and the Rhine River in Europe, have experienced low water levels this summer, stranding ships and disrupting food transportation.

Certain globally traded crops are also under threat. Studies estimate that by 2080, rising temperature, extreme weather and climate-related pests could slash the areas suitable for growing bananas by 60%. Climate change could also reduce coffee yields in the Americas by 70%.

Mehrabi said the Global Food Twin enables researchers and policymakers to model the impact of these climate hazards on the food system.

“If, say a heatwave hit the Midwest and, at the same time, the Mississippi River slowed because of drought, where are the communities that would feel the biggest impact? We haven’t really been able to track how disruptions could ripple through the food system until now. This dataset lets us start asking those questions,” Mehrabi said.

He added that low-income households already facing food insecurity are the most vulnerable to production or supply chain disruptions, because even small shocks in the system can trigger dramatic food price spikes.

When food prices rise, policy-makers can use stimulus payments and other dignity-focused safety nets to improve purchasing power for vulnerable communities, according to Mehrabi.

“This is a critical window into how climate change can collide with trade infrastructure, labor needs and food production. For the first time, we can start visualizing how that plays out on a global scale,” Mehrabi said.

A new interactive tool exposes the fragile, interconnected web of global food trade—and how climate change could disrupt it.

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��riosity: In the wake of Texas floods, how do emergency alerts work, and where do they fall short?

Daniel William Strain — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 16:37:06 +0000

��riosity: In the wake of Texas floods, how do emergency alerts work, and where do they fall short? Daniel William… Tue, 07/22/2025 - 10:37

Daniel Strain

In ��riosity, experts across the �� Boulder campus answer pressing questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.

This week, Carson MacPherson-Krutsky, a research associate at the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, answers: “How do emergency alerts work, and where do they fall short?”

Aftermath of the deadly flooding that devastated Central Texas in July 2025. (Credit: CC photo by World Central Kitchen via Flickr)

In the early hours of July 4, flash floods rose through parts of Texas’ Kerr County and surrounding regions, killing more than 130 people, including 27 children and counselors at a local summer camp.

In the wake of the disaster, numerous media reports raised questions about whether residents had enough warning to make it to safety.

Carson MacPherson-Krutsky knows how important timely emergency alerts are for people in the path of natural hazards like floods, wildfires, tornadoes and more. She’s a research associate in the Natural Hazards Center at �� Boulder and has investigated emergency alert systems in Colorado. Simply put, she said: They’re all over the place.

Carson MacPherson-Krutsky

“The biggest takeaway is that it’s complicated,” said MacPherson-Krutsky, a geologist and social scientist by training who studies how to communicate risk and help people prepare for natural disasters. “There are multiple systems at work, and they vary from municipality to municipality.”

In a report published in 2024, MacPherson-Krutsky and her colleagues surveyed 222 officials from 57 of Colorado’s 64 counties about their emergency alert systems. The research was funded through a bill passed by the state legislature.

One of the most basic kinds of disaster warnings, she said, are wireless emergency alerts (WEAs). These text messages go directly to the phones of people located in a particular geographic area. Amber Alerts for abducted children use the same system. (You may be familiar with the blaring beeps and vibrations that accompany these messages).

A wide range of government groups, both local and national, can send out WEAs in the event of natural disasters or acts of violence. Personnel need to take a training, and they work through a system administered by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its partners.

Before dawn on July 4, for example, the National Weather Service (NWS), which is part of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), sent out several such text alerts. According to The Texas Tribune, one alert at 4:03 a.m. local time urged recipients to “SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!”

Beyond WEAs, alerts get more complicated.

In Colorado, for example, every county tends to have its own alert system, which can be managed by a wide range of groups—from sheriff’s offices to fire departments and 911 call centers. They may send out warnings over text messages, social media, TV and radio, word of mouth or even sirens. In many cases, residents have to sign up or download an app to receive messages.

Previously in ��riosity

Are sharks really as scary as their reputation?

Or read more ��riosity stories here

“Depending on who's sending the alert, they have different procedures and protocols in place for what triggers an alert, who sends it, what approvals are needed and so on,” MacPherson-Krutsky said.

Those disparities become especially glaring for people with disabilities or who speak languages other than English, MacPherson-Krutsky added. Currently, the WEA technology can only support messages in English and Spanish. The federal government has made moves to expand the languages available, but she noted that a recent executive order from the Trump administration could make those changes harder to enact. In Colorado, more than one-third of the emergency personnel the researchers surveyed didn’t know if their emergency alert systems had the ability to translate to other languages or alert people who are deaf.

“That creates a lot of inequity,” she said. “A deaf person living in one county might receive an alert, but their brother who lives across the border wouldn’t.”

In their report, MacPherson-Krutsky and her colleagues recommended that Colorado adopt a single, state-wide system for sending out emergency alerts. Connecticut, Florida and Oregon have such a system, which counties or other localities can use at no cost to them.

She added that federal and state funding is critical for sending timely alerts in the event of natural disasters. The White House’s proposed budget for 2026 includes a more than 25% cut in funding for NOAA.

“Natural hazards researchers are worried about what these cuts would do to public safety,” MacPherson-Krutsky said. “Our colleagues at NOAA and the National Weather Service are doing such amazing work to make these warnings better. And if some of them aren’t there to advance this research, we’ll all bear the consequences of that.”

When natural disasters strike, people across the United States often depend on timely warnings to get to safety. But in Colorado and many parts of the country, these alerts are a patchwork that vary from county to county.

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Waleed Abdalati to testify July 16 at congressional hearing

Yvaine Ye — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 13:00:00 +0000

Waleed Abdalati to testify July 16 at congressional hearing Yvaine Ye Tue, 07/15/2025 - 07:00

Waleed Abdalati, a professor of geography and director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at �� Boulder, is scheduled to testify on July 16 at 8:00 AM MT before the Environment Subcommittee of the U.S. House Science, Space and Technology Committee.

CIRES is the oldest and largest of the national network of Cooperative Institutes at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The hearing, titled “Protecting Lives and Property: Harnessing Innovative Technologies to Enhance Weather Forecasting,” will examine emerging technologies for weather data collection. It will discuss how using diverse data sources can greatly improve the accuracy and timeliness of weather forecasting.

Watch the livestream here

Waleed Abdalati, a climate scientist and director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, is scheduled to testify before the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. Watch via livestream.

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Why flood prediction in the US falls short and how researchers are working to fix it

Yvaine Ye — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 19:08:40 +0000

Why flood prediction in the US falls short and how researchers are working to fix it Yvaine Ye Mon, 07/14/2025 - 13:08

Yvaine Ye

Dangerous floods struck communities across the United States this July.

Heavy rains in New York region killed at least two people after swamping roads and rails this week. In New Mexico, a flash flood hit a mountain town, killing three people. Torrential rain from a tropical storm destroyed homes and claimed at least four lives in North Carolina.

In Texas, over the July 4 holiday weekend, catastrophic floods swept through the central part of the state, claiming the lives of at least 120 people, including more than two dozen children.

Even with advances in technology, forecasting how much rain will fall, where it will land and the impact of flooding all remain difficult, according to Zhi Li, a researcher at �� Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

Zhi Li

“In Texas, different weather forecasting models were giving out different predictions,” said Li, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, who uses computer models to simulate floods and forecast risk. “It wasn’t until just a day before heavy rain began to inundate the area that the models finally agreed there would be extreme precipitation. That left very little time for people to respond.”

�� Boulder Today sat down with Li to discuss where the current flood prediction system falls short and what’s being done to meet the urgent need for real-time flood forecasting.

How does the official current flood prediction system work?

The National Weather Service (NWS) is the primary government agency responsible for issuing weather forecasts and warnings in the United States. Currently, flash flood forecasting is mainly based on the amount of rainfall expected in a given region. If the predicted rainfall is likely to exceed a certain threshold and overflow riverbanks, streams or dams in the area, the NWS will issue a flash flood warning.

Where does this system fall short?

The current system can only predict where the floods might happen, but it doesn’t provide detailed information about how much water could overflow onto land, how far it will spread or how deep the flooding might get.

Without the data, it’s hard to know where exactly the danger is and who should evacuate. As a result, it offers little urgency or actionable information for residents.

Is there a better way to predict floods?

At my newly established Flood Lab at �� Boulder, we’re working on developing accurate, high-resolution flood models, which are computer programs that predict how water will behave during flood events. Our latest model can predict flooding impacts at one-meter resolution, meaning we can pinpoint exactly where water will go and how deep it will get. Running these models is very computationally expensive, which is why the National Weather Service doesn’t have real-time flood models currently in use.

We’re developing a flood prediction model powered by artificial intelligence that also follows the physical laws governing how water moves. This will significantly speed up forecasting compared to traditional flood models.

Can we prevent damage from these increasingly common, record-breaking weather events?

We need to be aware that climate change is making extreme weather events more frequent, and that’s why deploying a real-time flood model is very necessary. It would be able to tell us with more confidence where the vulnerable regions are.

I also want to point out that our buildings and flood infrastructure were built 50 or even 100 years ago. They are aging, and they’re also not designed for the kind of severe weather we’re seeing now.

Flood mitigation is a very complex problem that needs collective effort from research communities, government agencies and industry.

Are drier places like Colorado at risk of floods?

Floods can happen anywhere, especially as climate change drives more weather extremes. Colorado has a drier climate, but it can still get very heavy thunderstorms. Because of the state’s mountainous terrain, it’s easy for water to rush down hillsides and trigger flash flooding.

And we have seen that happen. In 2013, heavy rains inundated Boulder and many towns along the Front Range, killing nine people and destroying nearly 2,000 homes.

What else can we do in addition to deploying better flood models?

Improving flood risk communication with the public is very important. Instead of just telling people there will be, say one meter or three feet per second of water flow in their area, we want to translate that into how much damage specific buildings might sustain and what actions people should take.

We’re also exploring customized alert systems. For example, we could provide tailored warnings for people with disabilities, parents with young children or others with specific needs. Current alerts are issued at the county level, but with better prediction tools, we could tell people exactly who’s at risk, where to go and when to leave.

Will federal funding cuts impact our ability to predict future disasters?

Budget cuts are certainly not helpful, but I also see it as an opportunity for industry and the research communities to step up.

I’m very optimistic about the future. I’ve seen firsthand how much the technology has improved in just the past few years. I believe we’ll soon have better warning systems, better flood models, and fewer lives lost to natural disasters.

�� Boulder Today regularly publishes Q&As with our faculty members weighing in on news topics through the lens of their scholarly expertise and research/creative work. The responses here reflect the knowledge and interpretations of the expert and should not be considered the university position on the issue. All publication content is subject to edits for clarity, brevity and university style guidelines.

�� Boulder flood modeler Zhi Li explains why current flood warnings can leave communities unprepared—and how high-resolution forecasting and better risk communication could save lives.

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Flooding of the Guadalupe River near Kerrville, Texas in 2025. (Credit: USCG/Wikimedia)

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Flooding of the Guadalupe River near Kerrville, Texas in 2025. (Credit: USCG/Wikimedia)

Electricity, air and plastic recycling

Megan Maneval — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 14:42:20 +0000

Electricity, air and plastic recycling Megan Maneval Thu, 06/26/2025 - 08:42

A collaboration between four fellows in the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute shows how electricity can be used to impart "superoxide powers" to oxygen gas molecules from air, enabling the efficient recycling of PET plastics.

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Wildfires threaten water quality for years after they burn

Megan Maneval — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 18:01:53 +0000

Wildfires threaten water quality for years after they burn Megan Maneval Tue, 06/24/2025 - 12:01

CIRES

CIRES-led research used big data to analyze more than 500 river basins—burned and unburned—to create and analyze the first large-scale dataset of post-fire water quality.

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Beneath crumbling walls: How rock glaciers took over the southern Rockies

Megan Maneval — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 15:54:18 +0000

Beneath crumbling walls: How rock glaciers took over the southern Rockies Megan Maneval Tue, 06/24/2025 - 09:54

INSTAAR

Rock glaciers are everywhere—at least in the Colorado Rockies. New research from Robert and Suzanne Anderson investigates how they formed and what benefits they might provide for alpine ecosystems.

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Mortenson Center innovations delivering clean water to more than 5 million worldwide

Megan Maneval — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 18:36:04 +0000

Mortenson Center innovations delivering clean water to more than 5 million worldwide Megan Maneval Mon, 06/23/2025 - 12:36

College of Engineering and Applied Science

�� Boulder's Mortenson Center in Global Engineering & Resilience is building a new model for global water access, one that is grounded in a deep understanding of why so many past efforts have fallen short.

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Farm-diversification research wins top international prize

Megan Maneval — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 19:11:14 +0000

Farm-diversification research wins top international prize Megan Maneval Wed, 06/18/2025 - 13:11

Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

�� Boulder’s Zia Mehrabi is one of three researchers named international champions of the Frontiers Planet Prize for research that finds environmental and social benefits of agricultural diversification.

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Chasing hail: Researchers fly drones into storms as part of largest US hail study in 40 years

Daniel William Strain — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 05:47:07 +0000

Chasing hail: Researchers fly drones into storms as part of largest US hail study in 40 years Daniel William… Tue, 06/17/2025 - 23:47

Daniel Strain

�� Boulder researchers follow a storm brewing in south central Kansas. (Credit: Patrick Campbell/�� Boulder)

Gray clouds swirl above a dusty highway in eastern Colorado between the towns of Akron and Atwood—what’s left of a thunderstorm that rolled through this stretch of prairie and rangeland just minutes before.

Wind whistles through patches of stubbly grass nearby. Then a hiss and a pop break the silence. A group of researchers release a blast of compressed air to fling a flying drone from a metal scaffold, or “catapult,” sitting on top of a white SUV. The uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) measures more than 6 feet from wingtip to wingtip. It catches the wind, and its rear propeller buzzes to life, lifting the plane dozens of feet into the air in a matter of seconds.

Céu Gómez-Faulk makes adjustments to the RAAVEN drone. (Credit: Patrick Campbell/�� Boulder)

The IRISS team rides out an oncoming storm near Wichita, Kansas. (Patrick Campbell/�� Boulder)

The chase is on.

Aerospace engineering sciences Professor Brian Argrow and his team at the University of Colorado Boulder have joined a research project called the In-situ Collaborative Experiment for the Collection of Hail In the Plains, or ICECHIP. For six weeks this summer, scientists from 15 U.S. research institutions and three overseas are criss-crossing the country from Colorado east to Iowa and from Texas to North Dakota.

They’re searching for summer thunderstorms.

The group is exploring the conditions that give rise to hail in this part of the country—peaking in the summer and causing billions of dollars of damage every year. In the United States, hail is most common in Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming and nearby regions, which are sometimes dubbed “hail alley.” Today, ice the size of grapes and even bigger litter the side of Colorado’s State Highway 63.

The campaign is led by Rebecca Adams-Selin at the company Atmospheric and Environmental Research and is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. It’s the largest effort to study hail in the United States in 40 years.

The researchers hope to understand not just how ice forms miles above the ground, but also how homeowners and builders can protect their properties from dangerous weather. They’ll do that by using radar to peer inside hailstorms. They’ll collect and freeze hailstones, and they’ll crush hail in vice-like devices to see how strong it is. Argrow’s team is usings its drone to map the swaths of hail that storms leave behind them in their wake.

“It is about saving lives and saving property,” said Argrow, professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and director of the Integrated Remote and In-Situ Sensing (IRISS) research center at �� Boulder. “We’re working with meteorologists and atmospheric scientists trying to increase warning times to give people a chance to get to safety and work with engineers and insurance companies to build better infrastructure to withstand these onslaughts.”

His team pilots the plane, known as the RAAVEN, short for Robust Autonomous Airborne Vehicle - Endurant and Nimble, north toward the rear flank of the thunderstorm. Then, they jump into two SUVs and follow the drone as it flies as low as 120 feet above them. A camera in the plane’s belly captures the ice trailing behind the storm. From that vantage point, the landscape, normally brown dotted with green, now also has pearly white patches for hundreds of yards in either direction.

For Céu Gómez-Faulk, who’s piloting the drone today, the sight is a testament to thunderstorms.

“It’s awe-inspiring in a very serious sort of way,” said Gómez-Faulk, a graduate student in aerospace engineering sciences.

Credit: College of Engineering and Applied Science

Dark skies

Five days earlier, Argrow and his team from �� Boulder join the ICECHIP armada at a Phillips 66 gas station in Greensburg, Kansas. The crew includes three graduate students, two IRISS employees and Eric Frew, professor of aerospace engineering sciences. They’re marking the first day of the project’s field season, or what the researchers call Intensive Observation Period 1 (IOP 1).

Judging by the conditions, the team should have plenty to study today. Weathervanes sitting on top of vans whip in circles as gusts blow a misty rain through Greensburg, a town in south central Kansas that is home to just over 700 people.

What makes hail

When conditions are right in states like Kansas and Colorado, winds blowing over the prairie can start to lift upward, forming a powerful column of rising air. These updrafts can push clouds from the lowest layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere, up to the colder stratosphere, which begins miles above Earth’s surface.

Within those towering, cauliflower-like clouds, tiny drops of water may freeze, then bounce around in the air—a sort of atmospheric game of Plinko.

That’s how hail is born.

“It starts with what we call a hail embryo, or ice,” said Katja Friedrich, professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at �� Boulder. “It goes through the cloud, and it accumulates supercooled liquid, which is liquid that is below freezing. The embryos accumulate more and more until they fall.”

But there’s still a lot that scientists don’t know about what happens inside the clouds.

To help find out, Friedrich is participating in the ICECHIP campaign through an effort that’s separate from Argrow’s team and its drone. Over the summer, two researchers in her lab, Jack Whiting and Brady Herron, are traveling with the armada in a red pickup truck. They’re using a device called a microwave radiometer to collect measurements of the air that rushes into hailstorms from outside—exploring how environmental conditions can feed a storm to keep it churning, or even cause it to die off.

“It’s my dream to be doing this, to be in the field studying severe weather,” said Whiting, who graduated from �� Boulder with a bachelor’s degree in atmospheric and oceanic sciences in spring 2025. “There’s a good chance that these events are going to become more frequent in the future because of climate change, so it’s really important to understand these dangerous storms.”

“This is relatively typical this time of the year, mid-May for the Great Plains. That’s when the storms really turn up and pass through,” Argrow said. “If you live in this area, you know what this means.”

In Greensburg, they definitely do.

In 2007, a tornado ripped through the heart of this community, damaging or destroying more than 1,400 homes and buildings and killing 10 people. Just hours after the ICECHIP crew departed on May 18 this spring, another tornado touched down south of Greensburg. It traveled 11 miles before dying out, and no injuries were reported.

Argrow is no stranger to the danger storms bring. He grew up in Stroud, Oklahoma, in the heart of Tornado Alley and remembers sheltering in his family’s storm cellar during severe weather warnings.

The engineer and his colleagues previously worked on a project, led by long-time collaborator. Adam Houston of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, called Targeted Observation by Radar and UAS of Supercells (TORUS). Over two seasons, the group flew RAAVEN aircraft into supercell thunderstorms, the phenomena that give rise to dangerous tornadoes.

But while storm-chasers may pay a lot of attention to those kinds of weather events, hail causes more damage than tornadoes every year, said Ian Giammanco. He’s the lead research meteorologist for the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), a non-profit organization supported by property insurance and reinsurance companies.

Since 2012, hail has caused an estimated $280 billion worth of damage in the United States, according to IBHS estimates. The largest piece of hail ever discovered was about 8 inches wide, the size of a large cantaloupe.

“Our role is to understand how we can design better building materials to withstand hail,” said Giammanco, whose team is joining the ICECHIP expedition on the road. “Whether it’s a lot of small hail, or these really big hailstones, we want to understand what that risk looks like.”

Ellington Smith, a graduate student on Argrow’s team, was an undergrad at Iowa State University in spring 2023 when hailstorms erupted around the state, flattening corn fields.

“Knowing what hail can do to farmland, its’ really important to be able to quantify the damage—figuring out why these hailstorms happen and how to better predict them,” Smith said.

Intrepid aircraft

Adams-Selin and the ICECHIP team are taking what she calls a “holistic” approach to studying those kinds of dangers.

The study armada is something to behold: At the start of the field season, the ICECHIP campaign included around 100 researchers traveling in more than 20 vehicles—including pickup trucks with mesh canopies overhead to protect them from hail damage and two Doppler on Wheels trucks. These massive vehicles carry portable, swiveling radar dishes that can peer into the heart of hailstorms.

“ICECHIP is 100% NSF funded,” Adams-Selin said. “If you want to know who is responsible for improved hail forecasts, better understanding of hail science and any of these technological advances that we are using, like mobile radar, that is all NSF funding.”

The IRISS team depends on a vehicle that is a little smaller—the RAAVEN.

It’s a tough little drone. The aircraft is based off a kit designed by the company Ritewing RC. This same design inspired a storm-chasing drone that appeared in the 2024 summer blockbuster Twisters. The body of the RAAVEN is made from the same kind of foam that’s in your car bumper. It also carries sensors for measuring wind speeds and air pressure, temperature and humidity.

If the RAAVEN is flying with the wind, it can hit speeds of 75 miles per hour or more, and the aircraft can fly for up to two hours uninterrupted.

“Radar can only tell you so much,” said Frew, who joins Argrow on the ICECHIP campaign. “To really further our understanding of the atmosphere, you have to be in it.”

For ICECHIP, the team also added a 360-degree camera that drops out of the belly of the RAAVEN after it launches.

The IRISS team’s key role on the ICECHIP campaign is to measure the swaths of hail that storms leave in their wake.

A storm builds near Greensburg, Kansas. (Credit: Patrick Campbell/�� Boulder)

The team doesn’t fly the RAAVEN directly into storms for ICECHIP. Instead, it stays safely behind the bad weather, soaring in a zig-zag pattern in the wake of hailstorms as they billow across the landscape. Using the drone’s camera in real-time, the researchers view the area below that’s covered in ice. They can then measure the width of these hail swaths, capturing how big a storm’s path of destruction can grow. Argrow likens it to “a snail that leaves a trail.”

Federal Aviation Administration rules require Argrow’s team to stay in sight of the RAAVEN at all times. To do that, the researchers get in their SUVs.

Gómez-Faulk explained that the RAAVEN is semi-autonomous. Pilots like him can control where the aircraft goes, but it’s also programed to follow a sort of digital marker the team refers to as a “carrot.”

“There’s a carrot guide point that we set off some distance from the car, usually in front of the car,” he said. “The aircraft is going to chase that guide point as we drive.”

Heart pounding

Back in Greensburg, Frew emphasizes that safety is the number one priority of the IRISS team. But he acknowledges that central Kansas at the height of storm season may be an odd place to find an aerospace engineer.

Before Frew started working on projects like TORUS and ICECHIP, he didn’t know a lot about weather. His time on these studies, however, has taught him to respect the power of storms—and what engineers can accomplish when they bring their work out of the lab and into the real, windy world.

“The first time I did it, my heart was pounding. I didn’t know what to expect,” Frew said. “In order to understand this environment, someone has to go into it and take the measurements, and that’s what we’re here for.”

IRISS snapshots from the road

Tracking a storm near Wichita Falls, Texas

Taking a break in Tucumcari, New Mexico

Seeing hail in northeast Colorado

Posing for a photo in eastern New Mexico

Finding hail near Morton, Texas

For six weeks this summer, scientists from across the country, including researchers at �� Boulder, are criss-crossing the Great Plains to investigate how hailstorms form—and how homeowners and builders can protect their properties.

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How does the official current flood prediction system work?

Where does this system fall short?

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Are drier places like Colorado at risk of floods?

What else can we do in addition to deploying better flood models?

Will federal funding cuts impact our ability to predict future disasters?

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