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The first field season was conducted in 2019, the second in 2022, and the last, under the moniker TORUS-LItE (Left-Flank Intensive Experiment), was conducted in 2023. Led by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, TORUS also involves the University of Colorado Boulder, Texas Tech University, the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory, and the Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations. TORUS instrumentation included unoccupied aircraft systems (drones), mobile radars, mobile mesonets (trucks mounted with meteorological instrumentation), a mobile LIDAR (similar to a radar but using an eye-safe laser), mobile sounding systems (balloon-borne sensor packages), and the NOAA P3 manned aircraft.

TORUS aims to use the data collected to improve the conceptual model of supercell thunderstorms (the parent storms of the most destructive tornadoes) by exposing how small-scale structures within these storms might lead to tornado formation. These structures are hypothesized to be nearly invisible to all but the most precise research-grade instruments. But by revealing the hidden composition of severe storms and associating it to known characteristics of the regularly-observed larger scale environment, the TORUS project could improve supercell and tornado forecasts.