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Flying into Tornadoes with The OTUS Project · Atmosphere with Emily Gracey

• Emily Gracey: May twenty twenty four. I'm inside the tornado. A drone flies into the eye of a tornado. Okay, it's open now. Yes. Come back if you need to. It's the first time it's ever been done. It's just a beautiful dust bowl right now. Gotcha. So I kind of go through that conversation above, kind of drop down into the eye. Do I need to come back? Should I come back? Yeah, come back, come back to you. And you're seeing these like vortices spinning around. It was just like, this is real. Like this is this is crazy. That's Lewis Tucker. He and his younger brother Nelson didn't grow up storm chasing. They grew up almost nothing alike. This was not in the cards for me. One obsessed with drones, one obsessed with weather. But over a dinner table one night, those two different obsessions collided into something nobody thought was possible. I was like, yeah, you know, you could you could probably build a drone that could fly through a tornado. And he was like, really? Like all all of science disagrees with that. Science disagreed, they did it anyway. It's the first time it had ever been done in history. Today on Atmosphere, we're flying drones into tornadoes with Lewis Tucker of the Otis Project. I'm Meteorologist Emily Gracie, and this is Atmosphere, a podcast where science becomes conversation. Each week I sit down with the experts behind the forecasts, the research, and the headlines to explore not just the science, but the human stories behind it. Through natural curiosity, we're making science more understandable, more relatable, and hopefully bringing a little more comfort in how we experience the world around us. If you're in the weather algorithm and you've spent any time on social media over the past year, there's a good chance you've seen them. These absolutely jaw-dropping videos of drones flying inside tornadoes. They're not CGI, they're not simulation, they're real footage captured by a team called the Otis Project, which stands for observations of tornadoes by UAV systems. Otis is a self-funded nonprofit using custom built drones and specialized sensors to get measurements from inside and around tornadoes, places where historically we've had a really hard time collecting data. The project was started by brothers Nelson and Lewis Tucker, an engineer Tannerbeard. And in 2024, they successfully flew a drone through a tornado for the first time. Since then, they've been continuing to push the technology. And their videos have gone viral, giving us all a pretty incredible look at the inside of these storms. But as amazing as the footage is, the goal here isn't to make cool videos. They're trying to answer some pretty fundamental questions about tornadoes. What are the winds actually doing near the surface? What's happening with the temperature, pressure, and humidity inside the storm? And can that information ultimately help us build better models and better warnings? Today on Atmosphere, I'm talking with Lewis Tucker, the co-founder and CEO of the Otis Project, about what it's like to fly a drone into a tornado, what they've learned, and what we still don't know, and what it feels like to watch your tiny aircraft disappear into one of nature's most powerful forces. Lewis Tucker, Otis Project. I'm really excited to talk to you today because the images that you guys are putting out are unbelievable and have gone viral over the past year or so. So I can't wait to kind of dig in and hear about how this all came to be. Now tell me, Lewis, what your role is with the Otis Project. So my role is I am the technically the CEO. So I Was one of the co-founders for the Otis operation and g handle a lot of things. So it's mostly keeping up on social media, keeping up with all the emails that we get. We get a lot of people that reaching out that want to help us out. a lot of fielding that. And then as well, just the field work and understanding, you know, how can we allocate resources properly to do what we do? Because, you know, it's it's quite a dynamic operation. There's a lot of moving pieces to flying driven inside of tornadoes. So Just having all of that managed or and organized is is kind of my role. And it's a family affair, right? Yeah. There's three of us that are pretty heavily involved. myself, my younger brother Nelson, who I co founded the project with, and then my dad as well, who's been helping us out. Can you take me back to like childhood? And were you guys doing stuff like this when you were kids with your dad? just kind of these experimental projects. No, this was not this was not in the cards for me. You know, I was just thinking. What am I gonna do when I when I grow up or what am I gonna do in five years? Like this was never really on the realm of possibility for me. mainly because Delson and I just have very different interests, like on paper. So I was super into outdoor activities. I was really into drones, flying them around, you know, getting to get outside and exploring the world. Nelson loved to stay inside. he loved the weather, but he loved more of the academic part of things. would he be watching the news every night for the weather segment and you know, all these things. Yeah, he was just he was obsessed and it was amazing as an older brother to see that. But I was like, man, you know, we're pretty different. Flash forward, I guess, many years, you know, we're in college and I hadn't seen Nelson in a little while. but I was again super obsessed with drones. I had a pretty pretty sizable drone racing career, where I was semi pro for a few years in college and then kind of reconnected with him over, you know, weather science and what we could do to help actually better understand the atmosphere. And and realizing that drones was the solution to that really kickstarted a lot of a lot of what we do at Otis. Okay. So at what point were you like, let's fly drones into tornadoes? Yeah, this was like over dinner. Yeah, ended up talking to Nelson, you know, hey, like, you know, what's what's going on like with the weather, you know, what like what are you learning? And he was just expressing me how many things that, you know, you just you just don't know about tornadoes. Can we actually get measurements near the surface to understand what's causing all this damage on the ground? Can we understand what's feeding the tornado with the thermodynamics around the tornado? And so he was kind of explaining these things to me. And I was like, yeah, you know, you could you could probably build a drone that could fly through a tornado. And he was like, really? Like, you know, all all of science disagrees with that. You know, I think there had been a paper that had just come out saying that it was, you know, impossible. and I was like, no, like I have a friend who has a drone that goes over 200 miles an hour. Like, I think this is possible. He's like, really? You know, and his eyes kind of lit up and and from there, you know, it we just kind of got the idea going. Initially I knew, you know, this is going to be quite the engineering undertaking to be able to design these drones, to build them, all the sensors that are required to put on the drones, it's actually the hardest part. It's not it in in our perspective, it's not actually that hard to fly drones inside of tornadoes. It's really getting really good data that is so much harder. because you're using a moving platform that's affected by by the rotors, you know, there's just so many dynamics going on. so ended up bringing on Tanner, Tanner Beard, who is the chief engineer of the project right now and he was a good friend of mine in drone racing. And the three of us really came together and actually, you know, plotted it out. You know, what would it actually look like? To get a drone inside of a tornado. It had never been done. People have been trying for many years. and so we kind of over engineered this entire system and we were and we were able to do it in in 2024. Going back to like the creation of this drone, and did you start with just one? And what was that like the first time you flew it? Was it like sending your baby off into a tornado and not knowing what's gonna happen? Yeah, definitely there's some emotional attachment there. So for the first two years of the project, I I did the drone building. so I definitely had some attachment there. I was like, you know, my baby. Yeah. that that's definitely a part of it. You know, whenever you fly the drone out, you don't know if you're getting it back. thankfully we've gotten it back almost every time. But the system that we initially came up with was very conservative to a degree. Like we didn't know how how the drone would react in the tornado. We didn't know. What the effect of all the winds would be on it. And so we wanted to give the drone its best possible chance to get inside. So what we did is that we engineered a two-drone system where we had a fixed wing drone that would carry the quadcopter drone on the bottom. And we would throw the fixed wing to the tornado, and it would carry the that smaller, more aerodynamic drone to the tornado. It would drop it off. And then that small drone would go into the tornado. And we did that because we didn't know how much how much battery life that we would have with the small drone. Because the because racing drones have a pr really limited battery life. Like in that sport, it's like you could get maybe a minute and a half, which is a flight time, which is really short to some people. They're like, What? Like I thought you can get half an hour, but it really depends on how capable your drone is. The faster that it can fly, generally. The much shorter its its fly time is. So we wanted to have a drone that had decent fly time, like maybe five minutes, or maybe even 10 minutes, but we didn't know how long it would take to get to the tornado. And then by the time it got there, the battery could be dead. So we engineered this two drone system that ended up being pretty complicated, just because flying a fixed wing you know, in these high winds can be quite a challenge. You know, you have to throw the wing, and we can't. you know, be hitting power lines or anything along the road when we're doing that. So there's just a lot of factors there. but the system ended up ultimately working. But ever since we've we've really slimmed it down now that we know more about what we're doing, we kind of eliminated that that whole fixed wing part of it just because it takes so long to set up and to the and to deploy. So right now we're just using quadcopters that are just becoming a little bit more capable every year. How many do you have like at any one time? This year we got up to round 15 and we were ready for some opportunities that didn't really present present themselves, at least in 2026. There were a lot of really good opportunities in 2025. and what I mean by that is like long lived tornadoes that are highly visible, they're not moving super fast. So you can catch up to them and you can kind of deploy more from one spot. But this year it was really difficult. we did have some really great intercepts. I'm sure people have seen online, but It wasn't it was just much trickier. There were a lot more rain wrapped tornadoes, a lot of tornadoes that were in trees in areas that were hard to reach. So it was it was very dynamic. So there's this whole drone portion, but then there's this portion like you're kind of hinting at now, which is storm chasing, which you have to get to the tornado. So I'm guessing that's where your brother comes in and does he map out a plan for storm chasing. And then also I'm curious what your thoughts on storm chasing are. Cause usually the non-meteorologist, non-storm chaser is like, are you nuts? Why why are we hunting down a tornado? Right. I'm a little bit of a adrenaline junkie, you could say. So it actually fits me quite well. You know, it it is actually fascinating because the whole reason why the Otis is storm chasing is not because it's for love storm chasing. Which is very rare. For us, it was way more academic. Like we wanted to actually go and help understand what's going on in the atmosphere. And that's why that we started this whole project and have been storm chasing. and with that, I think it provides a pretty cool perspective. because again, like, you know, we're not doing this for for show. Like we'll we'll release videos online and show people what we're doing, but that's not really the point of it. it's really about understanding the atmosphere. And that can honestly lead itself to a lot of headache and challenges because as a regular storm chaser, you know, you're just going out there in your car and getting to see the getting to see the weather. But we're always stressing about are the drones for perfectly working? Is our data right? You know, have we factored out all these you know things going into the data? How are are our sensors cleaned off and ready to go? Like there's just so much overhead there. But I mean we we think it's all worth it. So yeah. So where Tell me about the data and where it's going. Who are you partnering with? What kind of data is is being collected? So we're collecting temperature, pressure, relative humidity, and depending on the drone, experimental wind speed. So wind speed to us is probably the most fascinating because it is just like no one knows what the wind speeds are near the surface in a tornado. never especially the the the vertical component of of wind. Like there's just never been a measurement on it. we don't we have maybe a kind of a general idea for what that is, but we really don't. and so we're we initially started working with NIST, the National Institute for Standards and Technology, and they were specifically interested in that component of wind. And because for them, you know, they are helping with writing the building codes that goes into making homes safer. throughout the US. And they're, you know, they're very interested in what is actually causing this damage to these houses. So that way we can better design homes. we can put that into law. So we've they've been very gracious to us. They've been giving us some wind tunnel time and maybe a little bit of financial contribution to try to develop these wind sensors and that's been great. we've also been working with Josh and Karen Kasiba, the DAOs with farm and they are not actually very interested in wind speed. They're very interested in the third the thermodynamics and what's feeding the tornado. So a lot of the data that we've been getting with the thermo, we've been giving over to them and they've been using to help kind of understand what's going on. and with them, like they really want data in conjunction with radar measurements. So that way that they can kind of cross correlate, you know, what's going on here. And then we've also been having some other informal collaborations with NSSL specifically. my brother is actually going to Texas Tech this fall. He's there right now. He just moved down to work with their university and to try to help figure out more for the engineering piece of it's it's pretty similar with NES of like what are the wind speeds going on? How can we use that to help, you know, with better design? They also have their own. mobile radar program. So we may be integrated with them. So yeah, there's a lot of different organizations out there that are very interested in what we do. We kind of launched at the worst time. Unfortunately, when we did kind of get started with this project, a lot of funding dried up. There was a lot of promise of research funding and opportunities there, but that really dried up very quickly. And so a lot of other organizations have just been trying to survive just as we have. So we would like to get fully integrated with one. But we're still kind of working towards towards getting there. The like the initial idea of the drone flying into tornadoes, were you aware of what was being used in hurricanes at that point and the importance of like that near the surface data that was previously unknown? Like did any ideas spawn from the the hurricane work that's been done? Yeah, I I would say that that's been a really interesting science. It it is tornadoes are it's like a whole another animal. So for us with our designs and how we've structured things, it's not very similar, but you can definitely draw parallels to that. You know, they're dropping modified like like munitions and stuff that are that have all these sensors on them and they're dropping them over the the sea, but they're not actually able to get measurements really over land. And so that's actually something that we've been thinking about with other teams is how do we actually use this on hurricanes too? So we've actually been working with with Josh and Karen Kasiva on too. 'cause they're gonna be doing a hurricane deployment this year if we get a hurricane and we might be out there too. So yeah, there's definitely some parallels there, but a little different. Okay. So take me through like a day where you're you guys are like, All right, today's the day, we're gonna deploy a drone, hopefully into a tornado. So it really starts almost a week out. It depends on the setup, but there's so much forecasting that goes into what we do. I have so much more of a appreciation for that than I used to when we first got started. back in twenty twenty four, you know, I I had never storm chased before and really I think took a lot of that for granted, all of the forecasting work and as well with some tornadoes that we've gotten this year, you know, there were actually a lot of times where the models didn't have anything happening. But Nelson saw the environment and he saw different soundings and he kind of put the piece together and was able to make decisions to go to places that the models didn't have anything happening at. And we were able to get tornadoes. So there's really a lot of also manual meteorology that goes on, you know, with there being less balloon launches and data collection in the atmosphere right now. you have to do more of that heavy lifting to try to to try to really get there. so that's that's a lot of the work that goes, you know, from seven days out to maybe three to two days out. and then from there it's really, you know, specifying your location. So in general, what we do is the night before that there's gonna be a setup, we will drive out to that state. That general area. And then really it's that morning. once you, you know, get some either, you know, convection in the morning or you have like an MCS that rolls through or whatever the whatever happens, then the models have a better idea for that day, what's gonna happen. You just kind of narrow it down until you get to that, to that tornadic storm. So Okay. So then a tornado starts to appear. What happens next? That's how that's always the fun part. hopefully the tornado starts to appear on your storm. otherwise, if not, then you know, all like all hell breaks this and you're like, all right, what what do we do now? Do we stay on the storm that we like that we think could also produce, or do we go to another storm? do we go to the other storm that is producing? so there's a lot of these things going on in in real time. We'll start to position ourselves under the mesocyclone. We will generally deploy once we see a pretty defined funnel. Like at that point, we are booting up everything, we're getting all the drones ready, fully. You know, charged up, ready to go. All of our systems, you know, we're we're testing them constantly to make sure that everything's working at the time. And then it's really once we see ground circulation. If we see any ground circulation, that's when we launch the drones. We've we've gotten it to a point where we can launch, come back right away and keep going, but it's still like we have to pull over. It's a little bit of a process. So we don't want to get behind the storm by deploying too much. So we definitely try to deploy sparingly and do it when we feel like that there's a good chance that there's gonna be a tornado. It's gonna be on the ground for a little while. and you can kind of just see that in the atmosphere when it's happening. You can see a pretty defined wall cloud, you know, a pretty defined RFD cut, you know, something that's wrapping around a lot of these different properties. you know, you can just kind of look low look at the low levels, you know, how how are the winds around you? How is that, you know, working out? Like there's just all these different factors that you kind of consider and then we make the call in the moment to to deploy. It appears from the videos that you were staying in the car the whole time. Is that true? Yes, we've done both this year. So we developed a system where we could fly from inside a vehicle using antenna trackers. So we moved our antennas up above the car. Because we've if we fly from inside the car and our antennas are in the car, then our connection's not too great. because cars are metal boxes, right? So we this year try to get our antennas up on the roof. But that also lent itself to challenges because you're exposing everything to the elements, high winds. We had these antenna trackers where it was actually pointing the antennas at the drone in real time in the tornado, so we could get really good connection. Vest system ultimately, I think it was something that we developed very quickly and on the fly. So there were some bugs and issues with it that Tanner was going through. And so yeah, it really just depended on the day when things were working. At least towards the end of the season, we ended up just going back to what we had done in twenty twenty five, which is more old fashioned where we're pulling the car over, we're getting out of the car, we're using like like the standard FPV system, which is like these FPV goggles. You know, we're using our our transmitter, and we're just stepping outside the vehicle and being removed from that and then just having a direct line of sight with the tornado. It almost seems like a safer way to storm chase, because you have to be at a certain distance, right? Like other storm chasers are driving into the tornado and launching things like rockets and stuff. Right. Launching launching things. Whatever those things are. that's that is true. Yeah, it it's kind of you know, it's it actually is safer to be in the vehicle if possible, just because you want to be mobile. So like we had a time in twenty twenty four, same day as the Greenfield, Iowa day. if you've heard of that one, one of the strongest tornadoes, tornadoic wind speeds that have ever been measured. we were on the kind of sister tornado on the Carbon Iowa tornado. And we duh we got out of the car, deployed. Then Eric was realizing, he's the professional storm chaser on the team, he was like, hey, those tornadoes coming straight at us. And there's also another tornado forming to our south, which ended up being Greenfield. And so we were kind of in a difficult spot. and we had to abandon the drone flight. And I was really close to getting inside the tornado, even to this day, probably would have been one of our best intercepts ever, but decided just due to safety that we had to get out. and we had to drive away. So if there's a way where we can drive in fly, it actually makes for it to so we can get a little bit closer to the tornado, have better signal, and then still be able to move around. but we're just a lot more limited when we do have to get out of the car. Do you ever get nervous? Because I, you know, the way that you appear to be almost blinded, you know, when you're flying a drone to like what's going on immediately around you. Do you have to really trust like your team members to keep you safe in that in that time? Yeah. This was a decision I made, you know, back when we first started. I just told myself, I'm gonna trust Eric and the team. I'm gonna trust people who know weather that they're gonna make the right call. And I just don't have any bandwidth to to worry about that. Like I just need to kind of Give up that to them, because they're the experts. Erica Fox has been doing this for decades. And so I knew that we were in the right hands. it is interesting when you're flying drones into tornadoes because you are getting all the input, you know, into your ears from around you in the car, everyone's saying shouting different things. and you're in meanwhile, like one with the drone in the tornado. So you do have to like hold both realities together at once. And that's like kind of a skill that I think you can develop over time. And this is something that I developed through through racing drones, you know, where you're like really locked in on being kind of one with the drone, but then you're also kind of aware of the environment and people telling you things. But it can be pretty chaotic as the pilot trying to make the right call at the right time. Cause there's split second decisions that can, you know, decide whether or not that was a successful day or not or season. So there's a lot of pressure there. The first time I saw one of the Otis videos, my initial reaction was how How is this thing surviving? So how how is it surviving? Like ha the wind speeds and tornadoes are crazy. And how is something as small as a drone actually surviving those elements? There's a combination of factors. So, you know, you need to survive the tornado. So your torn so your drone needs to be durable. It needs to have the electronics inside protected well. But also, yeah, it needs to be able to overcome those wind speeds and overcome debris in the air. all the different dynamics. needs to fly in rain. You need to be able to fly when sometimes it's really hard to see because you're flying in, you know, into a cloud sometimes. at least at least ideally you're flying into a condensated tornado. and so yeah, that's a huge that's a huge design challenge. But that's something that we've generally overcome. So how we do it is we try to get the drone as small as possible. Because the smaller the drone, the less it can get thrown around and, you know, manipulated in the air. then we choose really powerful motors, motors that are way more powerful than what you see on commercial, you know, drones that people fly around at the around the house. and then we also, you know, have propellers on the drone that are that can really cut through the air well. and it's it's just a factor of having a really small, light, powerful drone that can be able to fight those winds. That's how you're actually able to be able to fly inside these tornadoes. And then what we also do is that we have a 3D printed filament shell that is super durable. It's called TPU filament. We use that in drum racing all the time because it is super durable and flexible. So it's able to have a little bit of give, but it really won't let anything through. we use a carbon fiber frame just because it's really light and strong. And so we do everything that we can to make the drones, you know, super. super durable. And this is a whole thing in drone racing. Like the the drones in drone racing can pull up to 15 D's G's and turrets. So they're meant to like experien experience extreme forces. And so we just use a lot of that knowledge and put that into into this. I wonder if and I know nothing about like aerospace engineering, but like the future of airplanes in like a more turbulent atmosphere, if they can utilize like this sort of, you know. tactics that you've taken into account here. I I think you're seeing a lot of this in, you know, like the future of drones, maybe bigger drones like flying cars or, you know, whatever is kind of on the frontier right now in aerospace. I yeah, you're definitely seeing a lot of this just because the materials are getting better. you're able to to 3D print things in a way that you weren't able to do before, but can just be useful for for for the inside of the drone. You know, it's even just for our sensors, we've been using a lot of 3D printed components. You know, you can design everything on the software, turn to your left and print it on a 3D printer in in your room. So this the access to a lot of these these kind of materials has been a huge game changer. Yeah, for sure. Did you watch October Sky as a kid? I did not. Twister. Like were any of these movies inspirational to you? I never watched Twister until after I had already seen Twisters. my gosh. You know, to me, weather was really Nelson's thing. That was my younger brother's thing and I wanted that to be his. So I just I'd never been super into the weather. I will say, like, I definitely had gone on my own like lightning chases because I just I do really like lightning. So there have been a few times at home or you know, when we're on vacation, I had kind of gone off and like looked at the lightning. And I definitely have a ha have a huge appreciation for for nature and that definitely shines through with this for sure. The other thing that really surprised me when I saw some of these videos. Or what the inside of a tornado looks like. I guess I I mean nobody had any idea, but some of these shots where you fly in and you get these 360 views where you're like looking up and down into the inside of this thing. Like that was mind blowing to me. And I'm curious, like you and your team, what was your the first time you saw the inside of a tornado? What was the reaction of the team? You know, it's funny because well, you usually have a monitor system set up where the rest of the team can see what's going on. But sometimes either there was, you know, a cable that was pulled out or something or and it's just the pilot, you know, it's experiencing this. And you're having as the pilot to relay this to the rest of the team. The first time we ever flew a drone inside of a tornado. It's the first time it had ever been done in history. This was back in May twenty twenty four. and I I was the one who did that flight and it was just unbelievable like Because how we had done that flight, and we still haven't actually fully released it, but we had a tornado that was pretty condensated above, and then had a lot of multi-vortices on the ground. So I kind of go through that condensation above, kind of drop down into the eye, and you're seeing these like vortices spinning around the drone as I drop down into it. And it was just like, is this real? Like this is this is crazy. and it's What was also funny about that and and ver and very just you know fun about that experience was that I had not done that much storm chasing up until that point. And that whole week I was like, guys, like there's totally like an eye to a tornado, right? And Nelson Eric were like, no, like they but like that's kind of a thing, but like not really, like 'cause it's complicated. I was like, no, like there's definitely is, you know, some clear center in the middle of the tornado. you know, just like based on what I'd seen in movies or whatever. And then I actually fly into it. And then in this case, there was kind of a clear center. That was like, see guys, like, you know. so that was just like a fun, humorous moment for us. But yeah, I mean, every tornado is so different. Like, I'm sure you saw you've seen some of our intercepts this year, like, for example, Jeffersonville, Illinois. the that tornado was almost just like straight vertical winds. so there wasn't there really wasn't an eye in that tornado. it's just some condensation. There's some Multivortices kind of going around. but then in other tornadoes like Wyoming, Iowa is an example. That was one of our first deployments of the season. I think that's actually our most viewed tornado by far. I think it did about 60 million. But like that one, you know, you they had these rings in the tornado. Like I I was like, I was kind of flabbergasted when like went into it. I like, I'd never seen that before. Like different rings. It almost looked like a hurricane in some spots. Like that one was really fascinating. And there's just, yeah, so many different kinds of tornadic flow, many different kinds of tornadoes. It's it's not very simple. Like you can't just fly drone into a tornado and then understand tornadoes because there's so many different kinds of that form for different reasons. How does it feel? And are you fully aware of like kind of the history making going on here and the views that you're providing and the scientists watching this and what they're learning from it? Yeah, it's incredible. I try to not get too excited in the moment. Like I'm sure people on the team would also like, you know, comment on that. Like I generally like to try to stay as focused as I can on the mission and not try to, you know, get too distracted from that just because it's so it's so dynamic and so involved. Like you really need to make split second decisions, whether or not for safety or just, you know, to get really good data. You know, there's definitely some times where I've been flying around and I'm like, this has really never been documented before and it's spectacular. Like one example of that would be last year I flew into a tornado in Crowder, Missouri. It was actually our second ever tornado intercept. And it went over a very small town. It was like a neighborhood. and it actually started causing fires and destroying buildings and downing power lines. And I was like, wow, I'm I'm flying in the tornado as it's causing this destruction. Like to me, that was such a huge moment because then you know I was just thinking about, you know, how can we use what I captured on the drone with the data to be able to help kind of correlate that to what was being caused on the ground. And maybe we could help better understand like what was going on. is it ever like sobering or eye-opening as far as like we think about the people that are actually being impacted. And yes, tornadoes are fun and exciting and this is adrenaline, but also like they're killing people when you start to fly into a tornado. Are you ever concerned about what you might see? Yeah, totally. And in that example that I just brought up in Crown, Missouri, like that was I think that's why it stuck out to me so much and why it was so, you know, top of mind just because yeah, you're seeing a tornado going for homes and buildings and you're like, like I really hope that, you know, people are sheltered. thankfully I think the tornado wasn't too strong. So was feeling a little bit better about that. But Yeah, I mean, there's always a risk there. with how we operate, we really don't want to fly that much over structures and buildings and houses. You know, we wanna because in case we have anything wrong happen to the drone, we don't want people to be in harm's way. So we've never really intercepted over many structures of buildings. It's it's really mainly been open fields and whatnot. but we do have those situations, you know, where there are houses that are affected by these tornadoes. and that's always a risk. And so that's something that you kind of have to mentally prepare yourself for is like you may see something that's like really really hard to watch. and so you know, that's why it's just so important to be focused on your mission and also kind of always know like why you're doing it. You know, a lot of people storm chase just for the thrill. There are people that storm chase to actually help, you know, people get out of harm's way. that's really amazing. And yeah, with what we're doing, we're storm chasing to Really help save lives to help build better structures and buildings and really help with warnings because warnings can be all over the place. You know, you there can be a tornado warning and there's no tornado threat, or there can be a tornado and there's no tornado warning. So there's so many reasons why, you know, that that we're doing this. And it's those kind of sobering moments that that kind of bring us back to that. Okay. So what's next? Like what are goals for 2027 and beyond? What are you guys hoping to do? Like Limitless funds. What do you want to do? Our main goal is how can we measure tornadoes that can be used in, you know, real science? How do we actually progress understanding? How do we help with modeling? There's so many new technologies with AI and and modeling and all that that hasn't really, you know, been applied in in our opinion to the weather space yet, just because it's a data problem. Like if you don't have the data, you can't do a better job with interpreting it. And so, you know, we really want to get good data next year and and in years to come. the main way to do that, we think, is through really like science funding, grant funding. We've just been trying to keep ourselves afloat through posting about things online, getting sponsors. You know, we need to fly 50 drones. You know, we need to like really get good data sets so we can be able to help really like have a good grasp of what's going on. That's our main goal right now is partnering with these organizations in more of a formal way, you know, actually getting funding through them and the ability to have our data be processed by those people. because we're not necessarily data scientists. We're trying to do what we can to get good data and to and to do all that right. But that's a whole field and and and entire academic study is, you know, understanding this data. So But yeah, it just it takes a lot of resources to to be able to really pull this off. Well, Lewis, is there anything else you want to add about the Otis project or the work that you're doing? this is really group effort. I I don't get paid to do this, although I'm doing it full time. Like we are really putting everything into this and self funding the whole thing. So if anyone's listening out there that wants to either help join the team in certain in certain capacities, whether it's with, you know, the drones or whether it's with social media or or anything like that. feel free to reach out to us. You can just visit our website. and then anything related to funding, you know, feel free to feel free to let us know. So thank you so much, Emily, for having me on. This is a really great conversation. For sure. Thanks, Louis. Thank you to Lewis Tucker from Otis for joining me on this episode of Atmosphere. If you're interested in partnering with Otis or looking at any of their really cool videos, you can find them on YouTube and you can find their contact information on their website, theOtisProject.com. If today's episode sparked any questions, or if you just want to talk weather, you can connect with me on Facebook, I'm Meteorologist Emily Gracie, or follow along on Instagram at AtmospherePodcast. 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