Nifty Fifty Speaker Karen Kosiba

It is well after 1 a.m. on May 11, 2010. Karen Kosiba, a post-doctoral scientist for the Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR) in Boulder, CO, takes a breather in her Doppler on Wheels weather research vehicle in Perry, Oklahoma, a rural town 60 miles north of Oklahoma City. She and her fellow CSWR scientists are bone-weary after spending previous hours in the region chasing a major outbreak of tornadoes- - a spate of wicked weather that ultimately spawned more than 60 tornadoes over a three-state area, claiming three lives in Oklahoma and causing more than $595 million in damage in the…