What makes a tornado tick? At NC State, we want to know, and we're jumping right into the thick of the chase.

This summer, a team of grad students spent six weeks in Tornado Alley as part of the biggest and most ambitious effort ever made to unravel the secrets behind nature’s furious force.

Armed with a top-notch education and visions of untwisting the mysteries of the twister that have perplexed meteorologists for centuries, our students crisscrossed the country, surrounding big storms to gauge temperature, wind and humidity changes in massive Midwestern storms.

"The goal is to figure out more about what separates an environment that produces tornadoes from environments that don't produce tornadoes," graduate student Casey Letkewicz told KLON-TV (Lincoln, Nebraska).

“It’s important to get data on that storms that don't produce tornadoes, because you can learn just as much from those.”

So if violent, massive storms and healthy doses of adrenaline fit your description of a great way to spend a summer, we’d love to invite you along for the ride.