Meet Anirudh Rao, the 11-year-old building a drone system to predict tornadoes

At just 11, Anirudh Rao began looking at tornado warnings from a different angle: not how to predict storms perfectly, but how to give people more time to respond. Growing up in Colorado, where tornadoes are a recurring threat, Rao developed Revere, a prototype system combining drones and sensors that measure factors such as infrasound, temperature and atmospheric pressure. His project aims to explore whether gathering information closer to developing storms could extend warning times from about 13 minutes to as much as 40 minutes. What started as a response to a tornado disaster has since grown into a wider programme of technology, environmental education and community outreach.What pushed 11-year-old Anirudh Rao to rethink tornado warningsAnirudh Rao belongs to an area in Colorado where the state experiences roughly 50 tornadoes in an average year. For Rao, living in the region made severe weather more than something discussed in a classroom or seen on television.He began looking at the warning systems already used to alert communities and became interested in the gap between detecting a dangerous storm and giving people enough time to get somewhere safe. The project that followe...