Congratulations to these two outstanding former #SPOTTR students!

Applications for #SPOTTR 2026 are officially open! Deadline: 3/13/26. Questions? Email or DM the instructors, @tornatrix.bsky.social and @meteodan.bsky.social. A PDF version of the flyer below can be found here: drive.google.com/file/d/19iLu...

We know many of you are waiting for the application cycle to open for #SPOTTR 2026. We’re working out some last-minute adjustments to the budget and instrument suite (all good!). When applications open, you’ll read it here first! Watch this space!

My Education Conference talk (11.2), "First-generation students gain more from atmospheric science field work experience," coauthored by L. Parker, @meteodan.bsky.social, and M. Couillard, will be in Room 350D at 2:00 p.m. Wednesday. #AMS2026 @eaps-spottr.bsky.social ams.confex.com/ams/106ANNUA...

We want to take a minute or two, and give much respect to the anonymous donor who helped make #SPOTTR 2025 a fantastic experience for all our participants! Read about the difference their support made in this year’s class:

Our department, Purdue EAPS, is releasing a series of video interviews with #SPOTTR students through their Superheroes of Science channel! The first video features Prof. Tanamachi @tornatrix.bsky.social describing SPOTTR's origins and ethos.

I haven’t processed that such an amazing experience is already over 💛🖤 Paige’s SPOTTR review coming soon…

Some highlights from Purdue’s SPOTTR course :) special thanks to @tornatrix.bsky.social and @eaps-spottr.bsky.social for an amazing week on the plains ☺️

#SPOTTR 2025 wrapped up its trip on Saturday! Miles driven: 3,442. Thanks to @paige-ashlyn-h.bsky.social for the wonderful graphic of our trip!

SPOTTR has returned to West Lafayette! Here's a video from our last chasing day (July 4) between Bismark and Fargo, ND. Thunderstorm outflow provided a rather ominous sight in our rear view mirrors with a shelf cloud and blowing dust.

After Devils Tower, we worked our way up to Buffalo, SD, where we launched a sonde that revealed multiple small inversions and rather underwhelming 0-6 km bulk shear (19 kts). Ended the day with a fat wall cloud near Belfield, ND. #SPOTTR

Earlier today, on our way to a North Dakota target, we stopped and did a little sightseeing! #SPOTTR

Your Fake-nado of the day #SPOTTR

Our group in front of a nonsevere storm near Spotted Horse, WY yesterday!

Impressive lightning show on our drive back from dinner to the hotel in Wyoming.

July 2, 2025: We drove from Nebraska through South Dakota to Gillette, Wyoming. Students enjoyed a slow-moving, photogenic storm northwest of Gillette. Driving west in the evening, we saw the sunset with storms over the mountains and on either side of the highway.

Driving to Alliance, Nebraska on July 1.

Storms started to get much more photogenic day 3 of the chase!

We interrupt your utterly justified rage fest to bring you some meteorological eye candy: a brilliant #hail shaft east of Alliance, NE. #newx #SPOTTR

#SPOTTR 2025, Day 2: hodographs were a bit longer today in NW MO and NE KS than yesterday, allowing us to target two storm clusters in those respective areas. The latter produced a funnel cloud near Centralia, KS, that we arrived too late to see. On to Nebraska tomorrow!

We took a sounding near Richmond, MO in advance of some multicell clusters. The profile contained multiple cloud layers and was vaguely suggestive of wet microbursts. We didn't stick around long enough to find out. #mowx

A nice way to end our first day on the road driving west towards Des Moines. A backlit storm provided an evening spectacle.

#SPOTTR Day 1: Our 2300 UTC sounding from Anamosa, IA revealed: ✅ Instability ✅ Moisture ✅ Lift ❌ No shear for you! Result: Pulse storms and multicell clusters

Departure group photo! Get ready, storms, we’re coming! #SPOTTR

Our #SPOTTR students, along with several guests from around EAPS, are now “certifiable” National Weather Service storm spotters! We are so deeply appreciative of Sam Lashley and Dave Beachler (not pictured) from NWS Indy for presenting an in-person training session to our class!

It’s been a busy week as our #SPOTTR students learn how to safely handle compressed helium cylinders, calibrate the compasses on their Kestrels, and more!

Today we learned about how radar takes slices through storm cells using colored Play-Doh (reflectivity isosurfaces) and plastic knives (the radar beam)!

Our #SPOTTR class launched a radiosonde this morning to help NWS Indianapolis collect extra upper air data in advance of today's storms! It was great training for our upcoming trip! Photo from @paige-ashlyn-h.bsky.social. #inwx

#SPOTTR is finally underway! Prof. Couillard is teaching everything students ever wanted to know about skew-Ts (and they are not afraid to ask!)

had an incredible chase in Texas today (and quite soggy boots)

Time lapse of a supercell I took this past Friday—can you spot the circulation? (possibly tornadic, storm was outflow dominant and it could’ve been a gustnado), open to interpretation :)

#SPOTTR APPLICATION DEADLINE EXTENDED to 10 March 2025! Come and chase with us this summer! DM @tornatrix.bsky.social any questions. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Applications are now being accepted for #SPOTTR 2025! Details below. Feel free to DM @tornatrix.bsky.social with any questions. Screen-reader-friendly version here: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Welcome to the new social media home of Students of Purdue Observing Tornadic Thunderstorms for Research (SPOTTR) course in EAPS! We plan to announce this year's application cycle here very soon. Watch this space!