STARKVILLE — As heavy rain and winds blew through the Golden Triangle Tuesday, a group of storm chasers stationed at the Quality Inn in Starkville stood ready to observe any tornadoes a severe front might produce.

Storm chasing is an activity people have engaged in for decades as a way to understand why particular weather events occur.

Through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Severe Storms Laboratory field campaign PERiLS (Propagation, Evolution, and Rotation in Linear Storms), a group of about 25 researchers from the University of Illinois and North Carolina State arrived in Starkville Sunday to find out how and why tornadoes form within lines of thunderstorms like the ones that blew through the Golden Triangle Tuesday.

Rotation was reported in Oktibbeha County that moved into Clay County and caused storm damage in both, according to the National Weather Service.

“Sometimes these lines of thunderstorms are common to the southeast United States in March, April and May,” said Jeff Trapp, a professor in the University of Illinois Department of Atmospheric Sciences and one of the operation’s leaders. “We don’t know a whole lot about why tornadoes form in these lines of thunderstorms, so that’s why we’re here.”

Starkville was the first stop on the researchers’ tour of analyzing tornadoes. Trapp said his group goes to locations that favor extreme weather, and based on data from the National Weather Service, Starkville showed to be the best place to stage and observe the potential tornadoes. After their stop in the Golden Triangle, the storm chasers headed to York, Alabama, later Tuesday as the front moved east.

After all data is collected this week from the different visits, Trapp said his team will return to Illinois to analyze the information, possibly traveling back down South to examine any damage that occurred.

Trapp said the purpose of this research is to have better information and understanding for meteorologists and weather outlets regarding tornadoes.

“The ultimate goal is to provide tools to the National Weather Service forecast to improve the timeliness and tornado warnings to the public,” Trapp said. “That’s the objective — learn how they form so we can better inform the public.”

This group uses technology from the Flexible Array of Radars and Mesonets, including radar trucks and mobile Doppler radars. Trapp said some of the trucks launch weather balloons into the air that tell how wind and weather change with distance above the ground and how much fuel is in the atmosphere to power the storms.

“They give us the extent of the rainfall and then they also tell us where we have circulations or vortices that may turn into a tornado,” Trapp said.

Data analyst Paul Robinson said storm chasers try not to get too close to a tornado, but they set up in a fixed direction to gain the best information possible while remaining safe.

Robinson, who has chased storms for decades, said he joined this group of researchers because he does not have much experience in identifying straight-line thunderstorms, storms that have no rotation but can have winds of more than 100 mph. He said he is instead familiar with supercell thunderstorms, which contain a rotating updraft called a mesocyclone.

“Those of us who have chased in the Midwest a lot can look at a storm and pretty much say, ‘That’s a tornado,’” Robinson said. “Right there is where it’ll happen. With these lines, it’s kind of hard to know anything.”

Graduate atmospheric sciences student Michael Sessa believes this kind of work is important because it not only helps the researchers but also provides further information to forecasters.

“Some of the students are hoping to use the data we collect in their research,” Sessa said. “For me, it’s more gaining experience in field work, and we really get to learn a lot getting to observe storms in person.”