ParaView Storm Visualization

Far view of vortex Closer view of vortex Closer still…

Tornado Vortex This set of images depicts the streamline representation of some swirling flow structures in a storm simulation. The images were generated with a tool called ParaView on a Linux cluster. The three images to the left are of the same thing saved at different distances from the objects. Click on the small image for a larger representation. The images contain contour lines of constant pressure on the lowest level of the simulation. Streamlines were seeded interactively at two locations in the domain. The locations corresponded to the lowest pressure on the surface as indicated by the contour lines. The small circular region of low pressure was seeded with a spherical cluster of points. The streamlines were then colored by pressure. White streamlines were seeded with a line of twenty points parallel to the surface and located at another, larger region of low pressure adjacent to the smaller tornado vortex. These white streamlines were propagated forward and backward in time. It is worth noting that this work is done on a single time step of a time series. Therefore the streamlines are, strictly speaking, non-physical. They do serve to illustrate the structure of the vector field at this point in time.