While most people would run to escape the clutches of a storm, this giant "eye", the Doppler on Wheels (DOW), heads for its heart instead.

The DOW is a mobile doppler radar mounted on a truck that takes instruments directly into storms, allowing scientists to scan storms and tornadoes and make 3D maps of wind and debris, as this one is doing during a research mission in Colorado, in the United States.

With funding from the National Science Foundation and government grants, scientists and meteorologists from the Centre for Severe Weather Research try to get close to supercell storms and tornadoes.

They do this to better understand tornado structure and strength, as well as how low-level winds affect and damage buildings.

They also try to learn more about tornado formation and prediction.