I am a research scientist affiliated with the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies (CIMMS) at the University of Oklahoma. My main research emphasis is supercells and tornadoes, and this web site is intended to be informative for anyone curious about these topics. I am grateful for the past support of the National Severe Storms Laboratory. This work is presently supported by the National Science Foundation. If you have comments, questions, or suggestions, please email me at rasm1@earthlink.net. I cannot promise a response to each email, but you can be sure I’ll read your email and perhaps revise this site or add to the FAQ that I’m building.

The credit for the wonderful design and artwork for this site goes to Elke Ueblacker, web designer extraordinaire. The links at the left are not all active yet, but do give you an idea of what I eventually plan to include here. Please be patient, and let me know what you think of it.

Near the top of some pages, you will see links for “easier” and “more detail”. It is my goal to make this information accessible to a wide range of readers, from 4th grade to professionals. If it is too complicated, just press “easier” and see if it works better for you. When I write easier versions of this material, I just try to use simpler language and less jargon; I try to keep the science intact because it doesn’t change when it is expressed in a simpler “language”. I also try to keep hyperlinks on each page at the same reading level as the page itself. Let me know what you think of this approach, and I welcome volunteers to translate this material into other languages, for other hemispheres, and for younger readers!