VETS Visualizations: Clear Air Turbulence

NCAR and NOAA researchers worked togheter to study an incident where a cargo plane's engine was ripped off by clear air turbulence.In December of 1992, a DC-8 cargo plane westbound out of Denver encountered severe clear air turbulence. Despite losing an engine (far right side) and 6 meters of wing the crew managed to land the plane safely. This event - and others like it - are a strong reminder that we don't yet understand clear air turbulence nearly well enough. In this particular case, observational data revealed pronounced Horizontally-aligned Vortex Tubes (HVT). NCAR and NOAA researchers worked together to study the incident and using NOAA weather data, developed a very high resolution numerical model to see what a simulation might reveal.