Zeb Leffler is a second-year Master’s student at the University of Alabama in Huntsville’s Department of Atmospheric and Earth Science.

In the spring of 2023, Leffler was the operator and driver of the MAX (Mobile Alabama X-Band Radar) weather truck for a 15-hour field campaign when an EF3 tornado touched down in Hazel Green.

On Friday, October 18, Leffler was providing tours of the truck as part of the 10 year anniversary celebration of UAH’s SWIRLL, the Severe Weather Institute — Radar and Lightning Laboratories.

Leffler laughed when asked about the MAX truck’s built-in microwave — it’s a common question.

“Our deployments can last anywhere from 12 to 15 hours. We can have a team of two to three people in this truck for that long. Especially if you’re doing an overnight deployment, you’ll need something — like a cup of coffee or ramen,” Leffler told the Business Journal.

Leffler’s career ambition is to be a National Weather Service forecaster, relaying weather warnings and forecast advisories to the public and to television stations. He is on track to graduate this coming spring.

Leffler was one of a number of faculty, researchers, and students on hand to answer questions at the afternoon gathering.

In addition to marking the 10 year anniversary, representatives from SWIRLL also announced a partnership with the Flexible Array of Radars and Mesonets (FARM) team.

The FARM team is led by scientists Dr. Karen Kosiba and Dr. Josh Wurman, who are based in Boulder, Colorado.

The partnership between UAH and FARM positions the Huntsville university as the largest and most comprehensive mobile radar and observing facility in the United States.

Members of the UAH community — faculty, staff, students, and alumni — gathered to mark the anniversary and the new partnership.

Dr. John Christy, Alabama State Climatologist and professor in the Atmospheric and Earth Science department, opened the formal remarks at the event.

“Alabama has high impact weather. We have tornadoes, hurricanes, ice storms, drought — you name it. But the event on April 27, 2011, in which 62 tornadoes ravaged the state of Alabama, could not be left unaddressed,” said Christy.

The calamitous outbreak of storms caused Governor Robert Bentley, then-governor of Alabama, to create a committee tasked with identifying weather threats and their impacts.

The SWIRLL facility was built as an answer to the recommendations of the report.

President Chuck Karr teased that he tries to say “yes” to every invitation that he receives, but he did turn Christy down when he offered Karr the opportunity to ride along on a tornado chase.

Regardless, Karr said he deeply appreciated the work performed by the SWIRLL team thusfar.

“I want to take a minute to personally thank all of you who are involved with the SWIRLL team,” said Karr. “The work you do is important, it’s impactful, it’s highly recognized, and it saves lives.”

Guests had the unique opportunity to view the UAH and FARM weather trucks, and tour the SWIRLL facility — which features a spiral staircase that mimics the shape of the Southeast’s most violent and amazing weather formation.

Kosiba said that while some of the finer details of the new collaboration are still being ironed out, she does anticipate that the collaboration between UAH and FARM will be both in-person and remote in nature.

“We’re hoping to give students access to all this different research and instrumentation,” Kosiba told the Business Journal. “Having both Alabama and Colorado, obviously that’s a lot of weather to cover.”

The integration of the FARM systems will allow students and researchers to look at weather patterns that are shared by both Alabama and Colorado, while also examining weather that is unique to each of the two states. The relationship will also allow SWIRLL to expand its regular operations into the Great Plains and the Midwest.

Kosiba hopes that the collaboration between UAH and FARM will be a long lasting and fruitful partnership which results in the development of new technology and new instrumentation.

SWIRLL is located on Bradford Drive, on the west side of the UAH campus.