The DOW, or doppler on wheels, is a weather radar mounted on a truck. With it, scientists can see the small scale details of tornadoes, hurricanes and even wildfires. Dr. Joshua Wurman, with the center for severe weather research visited the capital city to show and tell what the DOW can do, and help out meteorology students.

"They're getting hands on experience with state of the art insturmentation that will help them be better scientists, better forecasters and really understand the technology in a way that is much better than just classroom learning" said Wurman.

The DOW is equipped with other weather instruments as well as computer and navigation systems. This is just one of three DOWs used by Dr. Wurman to gather inside information on the atmosphere.

"There are a lot of things in the atmosphere, a lot of small things, a lot of violent things, a lot of things which change quickly which we don't understand very well because we haven't been able to get data in them before" Wurman said.

Since 1995, 141 tornadoes have been intercepted from all over the plains including Nebraska. The Cornhusker State has been a part of the severe weather research according to Dr. Wurman.

"We've seen some amazing storms in Nebraska over the years. One of our first two DOW data sets which was very important for us scientifically was out in western Nebraska in Scottsbluff....Nebraska is a very fruitful area for us to do science."

Science Dr. Wurman says can make you safer.

"We could make warnings better. We could make warnings further ahead of time so people would have more time to take action and we think we can save people's lives and maybe even save some property."

That is ultimately what it is all about when it comes to learning about these deadly storms.