May 9, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, at the turn of the 21st century, tornadoes were still one of nature’s greatest mysteries—ripping through the American heartland more than a thousand times a year, with scientists no closer to understanding their inner workings. Most had given up trying—until Tim Samaras came along. Brantley Hargrove, author of The Man Who Caught the Storm, shares the story of the storm chaser who risked everything to unlock the secrets of the skies.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. The turn of
the twenty first century, the tornado was one of the
last true mysteries of the modern world. It was a
monster that ravaged the American heartland a thousand times each year,
Yet sciences every effort to divine its inner workings had
ended in failure. Researchers all but gave up until the
(00:33):
arrival of an outsider. Brentley Hargrove is the author of
The Man Who Caught the Storm, The Life of legendary
Tornado chaser Tim Samaris. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Tim was just this middle class kid from the suburbs
of Denvery. Grew up in this little bungalow in Lakewood, Colorado.
And you know, I mean he was kind of an
unusual kid in some ways. You know, most kids are
playing with you know, action figures or whatever. He was
taken apart his parents' appliances for some reason. He just
really likes to take apart the blender or the television set,
(01:07):
just to figure out what made them go. He simply
couldn't take for granted the fact that they actually worked.
He had he had this innate curiosity, and so you know,
his dad just to keep him away from their appliances.
He actually went out into the neighborhood, out to the
you know this for the outlying community, and would pick
up like these old radios, these big radios with the
dials on them, and he'd bring him back to Tim
(01:28):
just to give him something to tinker with. And Tim
would sometimes he'd fixed them, I mean, if they weren't working.
I mean, he had this natural gift for figuring out
what was wrong with a piece of equipment, electronics and
putting it back together again. You know where he's probably
six years old. Wizard of Oz was was on Primetime
(01:49):
the Sunday evening, and his parents drug the dining room
table into the living room and served dinner in there.
And that's where Tim saw the Wizard of Oz for
the first time. And I mean he was once that
tornado started churning toward Dorothy and Toto, he was completely
transfixed by the image on screen. He just couldn't believe it,
this image of power. And uh, you know, the rest
(02:11):
of the film really didn't didn't interest him all that much.
He'd get kind of bored once they started hitting the
yellow brick road. But uh, you know, forever more he
would be he'd be drawn to that image, and you know,
he couldn't believe that there was there were such things
near his home, and he wanted to see one for
himself someday. He's a near Denver, so he's got these
storms coming up against the Rockies, these violent thunderstorms that
(02:34):
are known to produce tornadoes. And you know, when he
was the young kid, he saw his first funnel cloud
in the sky. So I mean that that's sort of
just ignited even further this fire that had first begun
with the Wizard of Oz. He's walking into the Denver
Research Institute, which is an applied science outfit. They do
all sorts of explosives work for the military, and basically,
(02:57):
these these guys are just geeks who used really high tech,
research grade electronics to study all sorts of violent forces,
among other things. And so Tim walks in. You know,
he's twenty or twenty one, walking in with holes in
his jeans and a T shirt. And he doesn't even
bring in his own resume. I mean, I don't think
he'd ever drawn one up. And so yeah, he gets
(03:18):
talking to the guy who runs that fit, Larry Brown,
and you know, I mean Larry Brown can see this
guy is clearly conversant, but you know, maybe not even
the most qualified person that he's talked to for this job.
And so he's like, all right, Tim, well you know
this is interesting, but why don't you come back with
a resume? And so Tim does, and it's this yellow
sheet of paper onto which he's handwritten his expertise, which
(03:41):
includes working at a mom and pop radio repair shop.
I mean, it's not a whole lot there, but you know,
I mean, Larry goes with his gut. He likes Tim.
He sees that Tim has a natural ability, and he
seems pretty cool too, So he's like, all right, I'm
gonna give this kid a chance, and he does. And
you know, I mean, by the time Tim is, you know,
years old, he's got a Pentagon security clearance. Brown saw
(04:03):
something in Tim that was I think harder to quantify,
except for I think this is probably the first time
he ever actually enjoyed sitting in a classroom. He did
take a storm spotting course and you know, some basic
meteorology through skyworn, which partners with the National Weather Service,
but by and large he was you know, he was
teaching himself. He was reading you know, everything he could
(04:25):
trying to figure out, Okay, how do I go out
myself and find these storms, and how can I make
myself of use to the National Weather Service. I mean,
he was also one of their spotters, so he'd be
the guy out there giving them on the ground intelligence
about what actually is happening, because radar can tell us
that there is a storm that you know, has some
evidence of pornatic quotation, but it can't necessarily tell you
(04:45):
the tornadoes on the ground, and Tim would be the
guy who'd be out there in the field with eyes
on the storm, telling them, you know, in fact, there
is a tornado or there is a one. Tornadoes were
so inexplicable, so poorly understood that at spirical scientist meteorologists,
you know, the government was just like, hey, look, let's
let's we can't even bother with trying to predict these things.
(05:07):
There's no point in warning people about the possibility of
tornadoes if we have really no ability to predict where
they're going to occur and when with any kind of specificity.
And so yeah, you know, with the you know, the
Signal Services, the Army Signal Services, which is you know,
initially in charge of you know, National Weather Forecasting and
then the Weather Bureau. I mean, it was just it
(05:27):
was it was the word you didn't really utter, and
so we didn't even really start making, you know, any
kinds of tornado forecasts until in the nineteen fifties. I mean,
it's kind of remarkable when you think about it. We
just did not understand them well enough to predict them.
And so you know, up through whenever Tim kind of
arrives on the scene and begins his own research, we'd
come a long way, but there was still a lot
(05:49):
of unanswered question. We had just developed in the sixties
and seventies. Doppler radar and then mobile Doppler didn't even
come onto the scene until the nineties, which would allow
us to scan at somewhat close range these tornadoes in detail.
And so we just had this really essential tool come
on the scene. We're learning quite a bit, however, I mean,
(06:10):
the mobile radar, even when you can drag it out
into close proximity with the storm, it left some blind spots.
It couldn't scan in that lowest fifty meters or so,
and that's a pretty crucial spot. I mean, that's where
these winds begin to coalesce. I mean, you know, how
can you predict them if you can't understand how the
low level environment is connected to the broader storm environment.
(06:33):
And so that was kind of one place that where
Tim was hoping he could fill in the blanks. Frank
was the spark. He's this explosives expert, and there in Huntsville,
and you know, back in eighty nine, Hunstill got hit
by a really violent tornado. You know, it killed I
think a couple dozen people. And in the aftermath he
heard a lot of weird things that sort of struck
(06:56):
him and where in some ways they related to his
own research. He was hearing that there were all these
people who were dealing these tremors to the ground as
the tornado approached. I mean, these weren't yahoos were saying
this was like the emergency manager. It was like a
preacher who was in the basement sheltering with you know,
some people from his congregation were saying, yeah, I felt
these I felt these tremors coming through the ground. And
(07:18):
so he's like, okay, I mean, could a tornado measurably
transfer energy into the ground to the extent that, you know,
you'd actually create some kind of shockwaves and what he found,
you know, whenever he went to a USGS Geological Service
site where they had some geophones in the ground, you know,
he found out that they actually did they were actually
seismic signals being created by these tornadoes. And so he
(07:39):
set out to build this device with federal funding that
he hoped would be you know, it served as an
early warning network. He would use it to detect seismic
signals of tornadoes and to give maybe a little bit
better of an advanced heads up. And so he'd he
built these devices, but you know, Frank was not a
storm chaser. He didn't really know how to go find
(08:00):
tornadoes and you know, put these you know somewhere near
the path so that they could you know, either pick
up or not pick up on these these seismic signals.
And so he started reaching out to all these storm
chasers that he'd heard about throughout the US and Tim's
was one of those names who came up as you know,
kind of one of these prominent through legendary storm chasers.
Tim had seen this Nova documentary on PBS a decade before,
(08:24):
where these scientists from the National Severe Storm Laboratories in
Oklahoma University were going out chasing down these tornadoes with
this instrument they developed called the Totable Tornado Observatory. They
were trying to deploy this instrument to get these long
sought after measurements from the core of a tornado, and
they weren't successful. But I mean, Tim had been captivated
by this documentary, by this idea of these scientists going
(08:44):
out chasing tornadoes down. And so what Tatum was offering
him was a mission that sounded a whole lot like
what these scientists had done. And so I mean, he
couldn't say no.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
And you've been listening to Brantley Hargrove talk about the
life of legendary storm chaser Tim Samaris. An unusual kid. Indeed,
he didn't play with action figures. He took apart his parents' appliances,
then ultimately stranger's appliances, garage sale appliances, the like anything
he could take apart and discover how the thing worked.
(09:16):
Most kids, well, they would have just taken for granted
that they actually worked and left it at that. We
learned how Tim hustled his way into a world class
research institute in Denver with a let's just say less
than stellar resume. Luckily he had a mentor and an
adult who recognized a hidden talent and worked on his
(09:38):
gut to bring Tim Samaris into the fold. When we
come back, more of the story of legendary stormchaser Tim
Samaris here on our American Stories and we continue with
(10:09):
our American stories and with BRANDTLEE. Hargrove. He's the author
of The Man Who Caught the Storm, The Life of
Legendary Tornado Chaser Tim Samaris. Let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
The Turtle probe was quite different from everything that had
preceded it. A lot of the previous inventions, none of
which managed to get into the core of a tornado,
you know, And a lot of attention was paid to
the aerodynamic profile. And you know, up to that point
it hadn't mattered because they hadn't gotten into a place
where that would be of utmost importance. And Tim did
(10:43):
pay a great deal of attention to its aerodynamic profile.
He conceived this device whose profile was inspired actually by
a previous instrument that had been devised by you know,
another guy at Applied Research Associates where he was now working.
It was an intercontinental ballistic missile line launch vehicle that
was supposed to be able to withstand a nuclear shockwave.
(11:05):
And what Tim did was he took those plans and
he scaled down and adapted to his use. So he
built this thing that, you know, okay, if it can
survive a nuclear shockwave, surely it'll be okay in a tornado.
And so he built this device is about you know,
twenty inches across, about six inches tall, you know, sort
of conical in shape, kind of like a traditional Vietnamese hat.
(11:26):
And it was filled with pressure transducers, sensors for temperature
and humidity, and this data logger that were core measurements
from all these sensors ten times per second. To that point,
it was one of the most aerodynamically and just you know,
in terms of the instrumentation, the most advanced institute probe
that had ever been devised. You know, finding tornadoes to
begin with is difficult. Tim was well acquainted with that struggle.
(11:50):
For every tornado you see, you strike out on probably
at least five other events. First of all, he was
dealing with that, just the difficulty in finding these things.
And then there's the difficulty, if you do, of maneuvering
ahead of them. So you've got to position yourself in
such a way that you'll be able to stay, you know,
probably roughly to the north and slightly ahead of the
(12:11):
tornadoes it's moving, to be able to drop down front
and intercept. So to add to all this, he also
knew that if he's going to deploy this thing into
the core, he's gonna have to get in front of
the tornado. I mean, even in a more extreme position
than he'd been in with Frank Tatum's instrument. He's going
to have to wait until the tornado is really close.
(12:33):
Because tornadoes they swerve. I mean, they don't travel in
a straight line. They are all sorts of little bobs
and weeds in their tracks. And so that means he
has to get really really close, probably closer than anybody's
really ever got and survived to deploy this thing. He'd
been trying to deploy on several tornadoes the year before
and got really close, and I think he was learning
(12:55):
more and more just how close he needed to be
to pull this off. And so in Strats, Texas in
two thousand and three, you know, there were all sorts
of risks that he was courting that day. I mean,
is he maneuvered in front of this oncoming tornado in
Texas Panhandle. There was baseball size hail coming down. I mean,
he could easily have been brained by a base pull
(13:16):
sized trunk of ammy. That stuff's fatal. So he jumps
out of his mini van. He's got his partner in
there filming for the scientific record, and there's this tornado
in the distance, you know, clearly approaching. It's kind of
this sort of multiple vortex circulation moving in at about
you know, probably thirty miles per hour, and so Tim,
you know, he drops his probe. They're starting to be
able to hear the roar of the tornado. He jumps
(13:38):
back in the minivan and they take off, and they
get overtaken by the rain curtains in the outer circulation,
and they're getting battered by some pretty intense winds. I mean,
winds approaching one hundred miles per hour at least, and
I mean they've got telephone poles bending into the road
and some are falling into the road. He's having to
swerve into the oncoming lane of traffic. You know, fortunately
there's nobody out there, just to steer clear of these
(14:00):
telephone polls. I think this is the first time, at
least you know, that I've heard and I've watched a
bunch of Tim's storm chasing footage. This is the first
time I really heard true fear in his voice. And
I think he felt at that moment like he had
pushed it way too far and that they were going
to pay the consequences. And I mean he was. He
managed to get out, but it was it was a
(14:21):
really close brush. By this point, Tim has been out
on the road for several years trying to deploy on
these tornadoes with limited success. You know, he's gotten close,
but he hasn't gotten that singular deployment that he's been
shooting for. And so, yeah, he gets onto a tornado
near Wondsocket, South Dakota, and the dang thing it keeps
(14:41):
to the fields of the whole time. Tim can't deploy
on a tornado in the fields. He needs to cross
a navigable road, and this thing, you know, it dies
right before it gets to the first navigable road he
could possibly deploy on. So he's pretty dispirited. It's June
twenty fourth, I believe, and you know he's getting towards
the end of the season. This is very late in
tornado season, you know, after this, it looks like there's
(15:03):
going to be a high pressure ridge. It's going to
deplete all the storm potential after that. But as he's
collecting his probes, you know this, this guy who's with
him notices the splash of golden sunlight refracting off of
the backside of a storm to the east, and Tim
jumps into the mini van and sees that there's a
pretty vigorous radar signature within that storm. There's a hook echo.
(15:25):
This could very well be an ongoing tornado. So he
gathers up his probes as quickly as he can and
then lights off down the highway east toward the storm.
And as he approaches, he sees that there is an
enormous tornado on the horizon. I mean, in my opinion,
this is probably the biggest and most violent tornado he's
(15:46):
ever actually encountered. This is the shot he's been waiting
for really his whole life. And the partners with him.
It's his brother in law, Pat Porter's you know. He
actually he actually asked, are we going to deploy on
that thing? And Tim's like, damn right, And so he
approaches this thing down the highway and it's closing in
on the highway, and he realizes that is you know,
(16:06):
his approach is all wrong. He can't deploy here, he
can't accurately gauge it's forward speed, it's trajectory. Trying to
get on that highway in front of that tornado would
be almost suicide. So he kind of pauses for a second,
then realizes that he's got you know, to the north,
and this thing's moving off to the northeast. The north,
there's a good grid of dirt roads. It's not optimal
(16:28):
to be on dirt roads because dirt roads get wet
and then they get bogged down. But he's gonna give
it a shot. So he figures if he heads north
on this dirt road and can take the next east
dirt road, that he can head the tornado off, drop
his probe, and then head north as the tornado moves
off to the northeast. So basically he's racing the tornado
to this intersection a mile or so ahead, and so
(16:51):
he takes off and it's it's a hairy ride. I mean,
the road just turns into cake batter. They're fish tailing
at various points. They lose sight of the tornado in
the rain. I mean, it's chewing through farmhouses, there's debris
drifting everywhere. But he gets to this place in the road,
you know, at this intersection, drops his probe and hauls
as fast as he can and the tornado runs over
(17:13):
his probe. I mean, it's a huge moment in the
world of atmospheric science. You know, the first time we
had direct measurements from the core of violent tornado. I
mean that was just something that the research community wasn't
sure that they would ever actually have. I mean, this
was his name was on the lips of every atmospheric
scientist in the world today. I mean that was a
(17:34):
huge moment, and you know, it brought him a certain
amount of fame. He was on the cover of National Geographic.
He was on CNN with Solidad O'Brien.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Some people would say, you are out of your mind crazy.
Do you get scared when you do this or are
you so focused because you're doing the probes that it's
your cameraman who's watching the progress of the tornado that's
breaking out and you're sort of focused on something else.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Actually, I'm pretty focused on our safety certainly, and I'm
focused on getting the data and getting in the right spot.
Do you only have one chance to do it? And
I want to make sure to be at the right spot.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Yeah, but you know, you got lots of chances to
have near missus and you've had lots of near misses.
You've been doing this for fifteen years.
Speaker 5 (18:13):
I've been chasing storms for fifteen.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Tornadoes are and is that about right?
Speaker 5 (18:17):
Or yea? You know I haven't been counting.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
You know after the first fifty, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
I've seen quite a few.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
He went on, Oprah. I mean, this was a big
moment and Tim his life changed profoundly after that.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
And you've been listening to Brantley Hargrove. He's the author
of The Man who Caught the Storm, The life of
legendary tornado chaser Tim Samaris, and what a story. Indeed,
Samaris had a big problem to solve. He had the
turtle probe. Now he had to get it inside a
moving tornado. And tornadoes, well, they're hard to track, so
(18:51):
you've got to get close. And finally, after fifteen years
obsessed with tornadoes ever since he saw one in the
Wizard of Oz, he had been the first to ever
get a direct measurement from inside a tornado. Fame would come,
but his obsession with tornadoes was well just getting going.
(19:11):
When we come back more of the story of Tim
Samaris here on our American Stories and we continue with
(19:39):
our American Stories and with Brantlee Hargrove telling the story
of legendary tornado chaser Tim Samaris. Let's continue with the story.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
You know, the relationship between Tim and Paul was kind
of like any father and son relationship in their teen years.
I mean, I don't think they were incredibly close early on,
you know, I mean, I think it was just kind
of the way it goes. Paul was, you know, sort
of an introverted young man who wasn't sure exactly what
he wanted to do with his life. Once he graduated
from high school, he sort of drifted to a couple
(20:12):
of different options, but you know, just none of it
seemed to stick. And then he started going out and
chasing with Tim, and I think that changed a lot
of things for Paul, both personally and you know, with
his relationship with his father. I think it brought them
closer together in a way they hadn't been before. And
I think for Paul he found a sort of purpose.
You know, he discovered photography, and you know, I mean,
(20:32):
as it turned out, you know, this guy, this young
man had an incredible eye. I mean, he was just
a natural both with a camera and with a video camera.
And so you know, Paul starts going out every season
with Tim and the crew. He finds this community and
this camaraderie with his father and this group of chasers
and researchers that Tim travels with. I think it was
(20:53):
the past Paul had been looking for. What he was hoping,
I think was that his data, his data, and not
only his data, but the data produced by his team.
You know, he had this He had these other researchers
with him who surrounded the tornado with these sedan mounted sensors,
so they would sample the environment feeding the tornado. Basically,
what you know, what what in the environment is making
this tornado form, what's making it intensify, what's making it unravel?
(21:17):
And so what I think he was hoping was that
his data, paired with these these other researchers data could
give us a better understanding of what sorts of mechanisms
and processes are in the environment that lead to these
really strong tornadoes. And some days whenever those tornadoes don't form,
what are some of the mechanisms that are failing to
fall into place? And so I think he was hopeful
that his research could help identify something in the atmosphere
(21:41):
on these really bad days, you know, these days like
you know in twenty eleven with the dixieality outbreaker, you know,
more Oklahoma twenty thirteen, What's what is it in the
sky on these days that makes these tornadoes so intense
and have such long tracks. And that's what his research
group was out there to try to figure out. In
twenty thirteen, Tim was a part of a lightning research
(22:04):
project funded by DARPA, you know, the federal agency, and
they were, you know, essentially just out there with this
box van that Tim had built that had all sorts
of crazy cameras in it, I mean, super high speed cameras,
you know, even one camera that could take up to
a million frames per second of video. And they were
hoping to understand some of these fundamental mysteries of lightning
and some of the other electromagnetic phenomena that a company lightning,
(22:28):
and so that was their main mission at that point.
But they had also brought along a Sedan for side chases.
So on that day, a May thirty first, twenty thirteen,
they knew that there was going to be a big
storm that they were supposed to be set up somewhere
far to the north of that storm to be able
to photograph the lightning. The best place to photograph lightning
isn't right up close to the storm, it's it's way
further to the north. But as the shape of the
(22:50):
day kind of came into sharper focus is they began
to see just how powerful this event could be. They decided,
we can't pass this up. We've got to go chase
this and they probably planned on coming back and photographing
lightning later that evening, but it didn't work out that way.
So they left their lightning photography vehicle in northern Oklahoma
(23:12):
and they drove south towards Oklahoma City in the central
Oklahoma area, where the storm was forecast to begin. They
set up on the southern cell of the storm system
just as it was beginning to tensify. They were in
perfect position.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
Tim what are you watching for?
Speaker 1 (23:29):
What are you chasing right now?
Speaker 4 (23:31):
Well, at the moment, we are looking for the very
special type of storm called a supercell. Supercell is a
very violent storm that is very capable of large hanale
and pretty destructive tornadoes, and so we're looking for the
formation of these particular thunderstorms right now, especially in central Oklahoma.
Given a long eye, forty is kind of where we're
(23:54):
currently targeting.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
So, Tim, you know, I mean, they went out after
the storm as they usually would any to I mean,
they were in perfect position to intercept the storm, but
it wasn't a regular storm. It was moving to the southeast,
you know, to the east. Yeah, I mean, it was
sort of all over the place, and they were struggling
to keep up with it. And what was worse is that,
(24:15):
you know, for a large part of their chase, this
monster tornado was rain wrapped. It was completely obscured by rain.
They couldn't see what it was doing. They couldn't see
how explosively it was growing, and how quickly it was
beginning to move. And there were just a lot of
things that went wrong along the way, you know, as
they were trying to get in closer to this tornado.
You know, at one point they thought they were going
(24:37):
to be able to take an east turn that would
prevent them from having to drive too close to the tornado,
but that turn ended up being a dead end. So
they had to go even farther south towards this tornado
and actually ended up traveling into the outer circulation, into
the debris core of this tornado, actually getting hit by
some debris. They had to drive then north out of
there and then continue along east try to get ahead
(24:59):
of this tornado. And so they were losing ground all
the while, and then eventually after they crossed US Highway
eighty one, that was kind of it was sort of
one of their last chances to get out of the
way of this thing. That they kept going because they
couldn't see what was happening. They could not see the tornado,
and they didn't realize by this point that it was
moving at highway speeds and it was starting to hook
(25:20):
to the north, and that it had this sub vortex,
this tornado within the tornado that you know, contained some
really really powerful winds. They later found winds in this tornado,
you know, well in excess to three hundred miles per hour,
And so they couldn't see this thing whenever it ran
them over. They didn't know that they needed to either
stop or turn north to get out of the way.
(25:41):
And you know I mean this, when this subbortex came
out of the it would have come out of the east.
I mean it just it was the last place where
they would have thought a tornado would come at them from.
But it caught them off guard. They came up against
the wrong tornado at the wrong time and the wrong place.
Speaker 6 (25:58):
You need to get below ground if you puss simply
can you know if it's on top of you, you
can't outrun it.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Don't a very large walk platforming and this to say,
spinning and getting faster and faster and faster carry.
Speaker 6 (26:11):
Back to you. All of a sudden it was over
them and it was around.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Around I believe it's right in there. But it's going
to be rain rapids. It is the most dangerous tornado
you can have. Because you can't.
Speaker 6 (26:26):
See these records. It's a gigantic tornado at least a
mile wide. I think we were seriously concerned. We were
on the air well ahead of time, even before the
watch was issued, saying, look, there's going to be tornadoes
in central Oklahoma. Make your plans now, do it now.
When they came back said it's two point six miles wide. Yeah,
(26:46):
I think it was surprised most everyone.
Speaker 7 (26:49):
If you were to say which is the safest chaser
that you know, I would say Tim Samaris is the
safest chaser. I saw him out there and he knew
when to back off. So the fact that this happened
on May thirty first, where he was caught in the
(27:10):
path is surreal to me. You know, this is the
person that I would last expect to be caught in
the tornado.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
One of our teammates, Matt Gritch, called us saying that
he was seeing rumors flying around that Tim, Carl and
Paul had been killed, and then he actually had gotten
some kind of message from Tim's son, Matt, telling him
that they had been killed in the al Reno tornado.
(27:38):
Different looking at rotating and it looks like get a
matter of time because.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
The rotation is getting stronger and drop stronger.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Garry all right, Well, he was traveling along this dirt
road looking for you know, injured people, you know, whatever
he could find. He saw this glint of white out
(28:08):
in a canola field, and you know, he went to
investigate further. It was you know, it was a sedan,
but it was it was just mangled, you know, it
looked like it had been stripped down basically to the chassis.
And he found him inside and didn't realize at first,
you know, who this guy was, but it kind of
seemed like he might be a storm chaser. There was
some kind of gear that was in the car that
(28:28):
was synonymous with storm chasers. And when he finally pulled
Tim's wallet, you know, out of his back pocket and
saw the name, you know, he finally you know, realized
who he was looking at because Tim, you know it,
Doug Girton had seen storm Chasers on Discovery Channel before,
and so you know, from that moment on, he he
did all his business with dispatch through his cell phone
because you know, he worried that you know, people listening
(28:50):
to a scanner picked this up, they would converge on
his location. So yeah, I mean it was you know,
when he found Tim, you know, that was officially the
first moment that you know, storm chasers had ever been
killed in a tornado, as hard as that is believed.
Speaker 5 (29:04):
You know, I've been doing this for twenty years.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
I enjoy the hell on it, I really do.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Out here watching the great clouds, the great storms.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
You never know exactly what you're Gonna find.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hangler. And a special thanks to
Brandley Hargrove, the author of The Man Who Caught the Storm.
The Life of legendary tornado chaser Tim Samars and What
a storm He chased? His final one, the al Reno
tornado in Oklahoma in May of twenty thirteen. He was
(29:38):
out there studying electromagnetic phenomenon and had brought all kinds
of equipment to photograph lightning, but dropped it all to
chase this super cell. The last storm Tim would chase,
and he did it with his son Paul. Both were
lost to this storm. The problem he couldn't see the
tornado and the tornado had within it sub vortexas that is,
(30:02):
this was a tornado with tornadoes inside it. He came
up against the wrong tornado, at the wrong time and
the wrong place. The Life of legendary storm chaser Tim
Samaris here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories. The turn of
the twenty first century, the tornado was one of the
last true mysteries of the modern world. It was a
monster that ravaged the American heartland a thousand times each year,
Yet sciences every effort to divine its inner workings had
ended in failure. Researchers all but gave up until the
(00:33):
arrival of an outsider. Brentley Hargrove is the author of
The Man Who Caught the Storm, The Life of legendary
Tornado chaser Tim Samaris. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Tim was just this middle class kid from the suburbs
of Denvery. Grew up in this little bungalow in Lakewood, Colorado.
And you know, I mean he was kind of an
unusual kid in some ways. You know, most kids are
playing with you know, action figures or whatever. He was
taken apart his parents' appliances for some reason. He just
really likes to take apart the blender or the television set,
(01:07):
just to figure out what made them go. He simply
couldn't take for granted the fact that they actually worked.
He had he had this innate curiosity, and so you know,
his dad just to keep him away from their appliances.
He actually went out into the neighborhood, out to the
you know this for the outlying community, and would pick
up like these old radios, these big radios with the
dials on them, and he'd bring him back to Tim
(01:28):
just to give him something to tinker with. And Tim
would sometimes he'd fixed them, I mean, if they weren't working.
I mean, he had this natural gift for figuring out
what was wrong with a piece of equipment, electronics and
putting it back together again. You know where he's probably
six years old. Wizard of Oz was was on Primetime
(01:49):
the Sunday evening, and his parents drug the dining room
table into the living room and served dinner in there.
And that's where Tim saw the Wizard of Oz for
the first time. And I mean he was once that
tornado started churning toward Dorothy and Toto, he was completely
transfixed by the image on screen. He just couldn't believe it,
this image of power. And uh, you know, the rest
(02:11):
of the film really didn't didn't interest him all that much.
He'd get kind of bored once they started hitting the
yellow brick road. But uh, you know, forever more he
would be he'd be drawn to that image, and you know,
he couldn't believe that there was there were such things
near his home, and he wanted to see one for
himself someday. He's a near Denver, so he's got these
storms coming up against the Rockies, these violent thunderstorms that
(02:34):
are known to produce tornadoes. And you know, when he
was the young kid, he saw his first funnel cloud
in the sky. So I mean that that's sort of
just ignited even further this fire that had first begun
with the Wizard of Oz. He's walking into the Denver
Research Institute, which is an applied science outfit. They do
all sorts of explosives work for the military, and basically,
(02:57):
these these guys are just geeks who used really high tech,
research grade electronics to study all sorts of violent forces,
among other things. And so Tim walks in. You know,
he's twenty or twenty one, walking in with holes in
his jeans and a T shirt. And he doesn't even
bring in his own resume. I mean, I don't think
he'd ever drawn one up. And so yeah, he gets
(03:18):
talking to the guy who runs that fit, Larry Brown,
and you know, I mean Larry Brown can see this
guy is clearly conversant, but you know, maybe not even
the most qualified person that he's talked to for this job.
And so he's like, all right, Tim, well you know
this is interesting, but why don't you come back with
a resume? And so Tim does, and it's this yellow
sheet of paper onto which he's handwritten his expertise, which
(03:41):
includes working at a mom and pop radio repair shop.
I mean, it's not a whole lot there, but you know,
I mean, Larry goes with his gut. He likes Tim.
He sees that Tim has a natural ability, and he
seems pretty cool too, So he's like, all right, I'm
gonna give this kid a chance, and he does. And
you know, I mean, by the time Tim is, you know,
years old, he's got a Pentagon security clearance. Brown saw
(04:03):
something in Tim that was I think harder to quantify,
except for I think this is probably the first time
he ever actually enjoyed sitting in a classroom. He did
take a storm spotting course and you know, some basic
meteorology through skyworn, which partners with the National Weather Service,
but by and large he was you know, he was
teaching himself. He was reading you know, everything he could
(04:25):
trying to figure out, Okay, how do I go out
myself and find these storms, and how can I make
myself of use to the National Weather Service. I mean,
he was also one of their spotters, so he'd be
the guy out there giving them on the ground intelligence
about what actually is happening, because radar can tell us
that there is a storm that you know, has some
evidence of pornatic quotation, but it can't necessarily tell you
(04:45):
the tornadoes on the ground, and Tim would be the
guy who'd be out there in the field with eyes
on the storm, telling them, you know, in fact, there
is a tornado or there is a one. Tornadoes were
so inexplicable, so poorly understood that at spirical scientist meteorologists,
you know, the government was just like, hey, look, let's
let's we can't even bother with trying to predict these things.
(05:07):
There's no point in warning people about the possibility of
tornadoes if we have really no ability to predict where
they're going to occur and when with any kind of specificity.
And so yeah, you know, with the you know, the
Signal Services, the Army Signal Services, which is you know,
initially in charge of you know, National Weather Forecasting and
then the Weather Bureau. I mean, it was just it
(05:27):
was it was the word you didn't really utter, and
so we didn't even really start making, you know, any
kinds of tornado forecasts until in the nineteen fifties. I mean,
it's kind of remarkable when you think about it. We
just did not understand them well enough to predict them.
And so you know, up through whenever Tim kind of
arrives on the scene and begins his own research, we'd
come a long way, but there was still a lot
(05:49):
of unanswered question. We had just developed in the sixties
and seventies. Doppler radar and then mobile Doppler didn't even
come onto the scene until the nineties, which would allow
us to scan at somewhat close range these tornadoes in detail.
And so we just had this really essential tool come
on the scene. We're learning quite a bit, however, I mean,
(06:10):
the mobile radar, even when you can drag it out
into close proximity with the storm, it left some blind spots.
It couldn't scan in that lowest fifty meters or so,
and that's a pretty crucial spot. I mean, that's where
these winds begin to coalesce. I mean, you know, how
can you predict them if you can't understand how the
low level environment is connected to the broader storm environment.
(06:33):
And so that was kind of one place that where
Tim was hoping he could fill in the blanks. Frank
was the spark. He's this explosives expert, and there in Huntsville,
and you know, back in eighty nine, Hunstill got hit
by a really violent tornado. You know, it killed I
think a couple dozen people. And in the aftermath he
heard a lot of weird things that sort of struck
(06:56):
him and where in some ways they related to his
own research. He was hearing that there were all these
people who were dealing these tremors to the ground as
the tornado approached. I mean, these weren't yahoos were saying
this was like the emergency manager. It was like a
preacher who was in the basement sheltering with you know,
some people from his congregation were saying, yeah, I felt
these I felt these tremors coming through the ground. And
(07:18):
so he's like, okay, I mean, could a tornado measurably
transfer energy into the ground to the extent that, you know,
you'd actually create some kind of shockwaves and what he found,
you know, whenever he went to a USGS Geological Service
site where they had some geophones in the ground, you know,
he found out that they actually did they were actually
seismic signals being created by these tornadoes. And so he
(07:39):
set out to build this device with federal funding that
he hoped would be you know, it served as an
early warning network. He would use it to detect seismic
signals of tornadoes and to give maybe a little bit
better of an advanced heads up. And so he'd he
built these devices, but you know, Frank was not a
storm chaser. He didn't really know how to go find
(08:00):
tornadoes and you know, put these you know somewhere near
the path so that they could you know, either pick
up or not pick up on these these seismic signals.
And so he started reaching out to all these storm
chasers that he'd heard about throughout the US and Tim's
was one of those names who came up as you know,
kind of one of these prominent through legendary storm chasers.
Tim had seen this Nova documentary on PBS a decade before,
(08:24):
where these scientists from the National Severe Storm Laboratories in
Oklahoma University were going out chasing down these tornadoes with
this instrument they developed called the Totable Tornado Observatory. They
were trying to deploy this instrument to get these long
sought after measurements from the core of a tornado, and
they weren't successful. But I mean, Tim had been captivated
by this documentary, by this idea of these scientists going
(08:44):
out chasing tornadoes down. And so what Tatum was offering
him was a mission that sounded a whole lot like
what these scientists had done. And so I mean, he
couldn't say no.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
And you've been listening to Brantley Hargrove talk about the
life of legendary storm chaser Tim Samaris. An unusual kid. Indeed,
he didn't play with action figures. He took apart his parents' appliances,
then ultimately stranger's appliances, garage sale appliances, the like anything
he could take apart and discover how the thing worked.
(09:16):
Most kids, well, they would have just taken for granted
that they actually worked and left it at that. We
learned how Tim hustled his way into a world class
research institute in Denver with a let's just say less
than stellar resume. Luckily he had a mentor and an
adult who recognized a hidden talent and worked on his
(09:38):
gut to bring Tim Samaris into the fold. When we
come back, more of the story of legendary stormchaser Tim
Samaris here on our American Stories and we continue with
(10:09):
our American stories and with BRANDTLEE. Hargrove. He's the author
of The Man Who Caught the Storm, The Life of
Legendary Tornado Chaser Tim Samaris. Let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
The Turtle probe was quite different from everything that had
preceded it. A lot of the previous inventions, none of
which managed to get into the core of a tornado,
you know, And a lot of attention was paid to
the aerodynamic profile. And you know, up to that point
it hadn't mattered because they hadn't gotten into a place
where that would be of utmost importance. And Tim did
(10:43):
pay a great deal of attention to its aerodynamic profile.
He conceived this device whose profile was inspired actually by
a previous instrument that had been devised by you know,
another guy at Applied Research Associates where he was now working.
It was an intercontinental ballistic missile line launch vehicle that
was supposed to be able to withstand a nuclear shockwave.
(11:05):
And what Tim did was he took those plans and
he scaled down and adapted to his use. So he
built this thing that, you know, okay, if it can
survive a nuclear shockwave, surely it'll be okay in a tornado.
And so he built this device is about you know,
twenty inches across, about six inches tall, you know, sort
of conical in shape, kind of like a traditional Vietnamese hat.
(11:26):
And it was filled with pressure transducers, sensors for temperature
and humidity, and this data logger that were core measurements
from all these sensors ten times per second. To that point,
it was one of the most aerodynamically and just you know,
in terms of the instrumentation, the most advanced institute probe
that had ever been devised. You know, finding tornadoes to
begin with is difficult. Tim was well acquainted with that struggle.
(11:50):
For every tornado you see, you strike out on probably
at least five other events. First of all, he was
dealing with that, just the difficulty in finding these things.
And then there's the difficulty, if you do, of maneuvering
ahead of them. So you've got to position yourself in
such a way that you'll be able to stay, you know,
probably roughly to the north and slightly ahead of the
(12:11):
tornadoes it's moving, to be able to drop down front
and intercept. So to add to all this, he also
knew that if he's going to deploy this thing into
the core, he's gonna have to get in front of
the tornado. I mean, even in a more extreme position
than he'd been in with Frank Tatum's instrument. He's going
to have to wait until the tornado is really close.
(12:33):
Because tornadoes they swerve. I mean, they don't travel in
a straight line. They are all sorts of little bobs
and weeds in their tracks. And so that means he
has to get really really close, probably closer than anybody's
really ever got and survived to deploy this thing. He'd
been trying to deploy on several tornadoes the year before
and got really close, and I think he was learning
(12:55):
more and more just how close he needed to be
to pull this off. And so in Strats, Texas in
two thousand and three, you know, there were all sorts
of risks that he was courting that day. I mean,
is he maneuvered in front of this oncoming tornado in
Texas Panhandle. There was baseball size hail coming down. I mean,
he could easily have been brained by a base pull
(13:16):
sized trunk of ammy. That stuff's fatal. So he jumps
out of his mini van. He's got his partner in
there filming for the scientific record, and there's this tornado
in the distance, you know, clearly approaching. It's kind of
this sort of multiple vortex circulation moving in at about
you know, probably thirty miles per hour, and so Tim,
you know, he drops his probe. They're starting to be
able to hear the roar of the tornado. He jumps
(13:38):
back in the minivan and they take off, and they
get overtaken by the rain curtains in the outer circulation,
and they're getting battered by some pretty intense winds. I mean,
winds approaching one hundred miles per hour at least, and
I mean they've got telephone poles bending into the road
and some are falling into the road. He's having to
swerve into the oncoming lane of traffic. You know, fortunately
there's nobody out there, just to steer clear of these
(14:00):
telephone polls. I think this is the first time, at
least you know, that I've heard and I've watched a
bunch of Tim's storm chasing footage. This is the first
time I really heard true fear in his voice. And
I think he felt at that moment like he had
pushed it way too far and that they were going
to pay the consequences. And I mean he was. He
managed to get out, but it was it was a
(14:21):
really close brush. By this point, Tim has been out
on the road for several years trying to deploy on
these tornadoes with limited success. You know, he's gotten close,
but he hasn't gotten that singular deployment that he's been
shooting for. And so, yeah, he gets onto a tornado
near Wondsocket, South Dakota, and the dang thing it keeps
(14:41):
to the fields of the whole time. Tim can't deploy
on a tornado in the fields. He needs to cross
a navigable road, and this thing, you know, it dies
right before it gets to the first navigable road he
could possibly deploy on. So he's pretty dispirited. It's June
twenty fourth, I believe, and you know he's getting towards
the end of the season. This is very late in
tornado season, you know, after this, it looks like there's
(15:03):
going to be a high pressure ridge. It's going to
deplete all the storm potential after that. But as he's
collecting his probes, you know this, this guy who's with
him notices the splash of golden sunlight refracting off of
the backside of a storm to the east, and Tim
jumps into the mini van and sees that there's a
pretty vigorous radar signature within that storm. There's a hook echo.
(15:25):
This could very well be an ongoing tornado. So he
gathers up his probes as quickly as he can and
then lights off down the highway east toward the storm.
And as he approaches, he sees that there is an
enormous tornado on the horizon. I mean, in my opinion,
this is probably the biggest and most violent tornado he's
(15:46):
ever actually encountered. This is the shot he's been waiting
for really his whole life. And the partners with him.
It's his brother in law, Pat Porter's you know. He
actually he actually asked, are we going to deploy on
that thing? And Tim's like, damn right, And so he
approaches this thing down the highway and it's closing in
on the highway, and he realizes that is you know,
(16:06):
his approach is all wrong. He can't deploy here, he
can't accurately gauge it's forward speed, it's trajectory. Trying to
get on that highway in front of that tornado would
be almost suicide. So he kind of pauses for a second,
then realizes that he's got you know, to the north,
and this thing's moving off to the northeast. The north,
there's a good grid of dirt roads. It's not optimal
(16:28):
to be on dirt roads because dirt roads get wet
and then they get bogged down. But he's gonna give
it a shot. So he figures if he heads north
on this dirt road and can take the next east
dirt road, that he can head the tornado off, drop
his probe, and then head north as the tornado moves
off to the northeast. So basically he's racing the tornado
to this intersection a mile or so ahead, and so
(16:51):
he takes off and it's it's a hairy ride. I mean,
the road just turns into cake batter. They're fish tailing
at various points. They lose sight of the tornado in
the rain. I mean, it's chewing through farmhouses, there's debris
drifting everywhere. But he gets to this place in the road,
you know, at this intersection, drops his probe and hauls
as fast as he can and the tornado runs over
(17:13):
his probe. I mean, it's a huge moment in the
world of atmospheric science. You know, the first time we
had direct measurements from the core of violent tornado. I
mean that was just something that the research community wasn't
sure that they would ever actually have. I mean, this
was his name was on the lips of every atmospheric
scientist in the world today. I mean that was a
(17:34):
huge moment, and you know, it brought him a certain
amount of fame. He was on the cover of National Geographic.
He was on CNN with Solidad O'Brien.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Some people would say, you are out of your mind crazy.
Do you get scared when you do this or are
you so focused because you're doing the probes that it's
your cameraman who's watching the progress of the tornado that's
breaking out and you're sort of focused on something else.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Actually, I'm pretty focused on our safety certainly, and I'm
focused on getting the data and getting in the right spot.
Do you only have one chance to do it? And
I want to make sure to be at the right spot.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Yeah, but you know, you got lots of chances to
have near missus and you've had lots of near misses.
You've been doing this for fifteen years.
Speaker 5 (18:13):
I've been chasing storms for fifteen.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Tornadoes are and is that about right?
Speaker 5 (18:17):
Or yea? You know I haven't been counting.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
You know after the first fifty, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
I've seen quite a few.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
He went on, Oprah. I mean, this was a big
moment and Tim his life changed profoundly after that.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
And you've been listening to Brantley Hargrove. He's the author
of The Man who Caught the Storm, The life of
legendary tornado chaser Tim Samaris, and what a story. Indeed,
Samaris had a big problem to solve. He had the
turtle probe. Now he had to get it inside a
moving tornado. And tornadoes, well, they're hard to track, so
(18:51):
you've got to get close. And finally, after fifteen years
obsessed with tornadoes ever since he saw one in the
Wizard of Oz, he had been the first to ever
get a direct measurement from inside a tornado. Fame would come,
but his obsession with tornadoes was well just getting going.
(19:11):
When we come back more of the story of Tim
Samaris here on our American Stories and we continue with
(19:39):
our American Stories and with Brantlee Hargrove telling the story
of legendary tornado chaser Tim Samaris. Let's continue with the story.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
You know, the relationship between Tim and Paul was kind
of like any father and son relationship in their teen years.
I mean, I don't think they were incredibly close early on,
you know, I mean, I think it was just kind
of the way it goes. Paul was, you know, sort
of an introverted young man who wasn't sure exactly what
he wanted to do with his life. Once he graduated
from high school, he sort of drifted to a couple
(20:12):
of different options, but you know, just none of it
seemed to stick. And then he started going out and
chasing with Tim, and I think that changed a lot
of things for Paul, both personally and you know, with
his relationship with his father. I think it brought them
closer together in a way they hadn't been before. And
I think for Paul he found a sort of purpose.
You know, he discovered photography, and you know, I mean,
(20:32):
as it turned out, you know, this guy, this young
man had an incredible eye. I mean, he was just
a natural both with a camera and with a video camera.
And so you know, Paul starts going out every season
with Tim and the crew. He finds this community and
this camaraderie with his father and this group of chasers
and researchers that Tim travels with. I think it was
(20:53):
the past Paul had been looking for. What he was hoping,
I think was that his data, his data, and not
only his data, but the data produced by his team.
You know, he had this He had these other researchers
with him who surrounded the tornado with these sedan mounted sensors,
so they would sample the environment feeding the tornado. Basically,
what you know, what what in the environment is making
this tornado form, what's making it intensify, what's making it unravel?
(21:17):
And so what I think he was hoping was that
his data, paired with these these other researchers data could
give us a better understanding of what sorts of mechanisms
and processes are in the environment that lead to these
really strong tornadoes. And some days whenever those tornadoes don't form,
what are some of the mechanisms that are failing to
fall into place? And so I think he was hopeful
that his research could help identify something in the atmosphere
(21:41):
on these really bad days, you know, these days like
you know in twenty eleven with the dixieality outbreaker, you know,
more Oklahoma twenty thirteen, What's what is it in the
sky on these days that makes these tornadoes so intense
and have such long tracks. And that's what his research
group was out there to try to figure out. In
twenty thirteen, Tim was a part of a lightning research
(22:04):
project funded by DARPA, you know, the federal agency, and
they were, you know, essentially just out there with this
box van that Tim had built that had all sorts
of crazy cameras in it, I mean, super high speed cameras,
you know, even one camera that could take up to
a million frames per second of video. And they were
hoping to understand some of these fundamental mysteries of lightning
and some of the other electromagnetic phenomena that a company lightning,
(22:28):
and so that was their main mission at that point.
But they had also brought along a Sedan for side chases.
So on that day, a May thirty first, twenty thirteen,
they knew that there was going to be a big
storm that they were supposed to be set up somewhere
far to the north of that storm to be able
to photograph the lightning. The best place to photograph lightning
isn't right up close to the storm, it's it's way
further to the north. But as the shape of the
(22:50):
day kind of came into sharper focus is they began
to see just how powerful this event could be. They decided,
we can't pass this up. We've got to go chase
this and they probably planned on coming back and photographing
lightning later that evening, but it didn't work out that way.
So they left their lightning photography vehicle in northern Oklahoma
(23:12):
and they drove south towards Oklahoma City in the central
Oklahoma area, where the storm was forecast to begin. They
set up on the southern cell of the storm system
just as it was beginning to tensify. They were in
perfect position.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
Tim what are you watching for?
Speaker 1 (23:29):
What are you chasing right now?
Speaker 4 (23:31):
Well, at the moment, we are looking for the very
special type of storm called a supercell. Supercell is a
very violent storm that is very capable of large hanale
and pretty destructive tornadoes, and so we're looking for the
formation of these particular thunderstorms right now, especially in central Oklahoma.
Given a long eye, forty is kind of where we're
(23:54):
currently targeting.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
So, Tim, you know, I mean, they went out after
the storm as they usually would any to I mean,
they were in perfect position to intercept the storm, but
it wasn't a regular storm. It was moving to the southeast,
you know, to the east. Yeah, I mean, it was
sort of all over the place, and they were struggling
to keep up with it. And what was worse is that,
(24:15):
you know, for a large part of their chase, this
monster tornado was rain wrapped. It was completely obscured by rain.
They couldn't see what it was doing. They couldn't see
how explosively it was growing, and how quickly it was
beginning to move. And there were just a lot of
things that went wrong along the way, you know, as
they were trying to get in closer to this tornado.
You know, at one point they thought they were going
(24:37):
to be able to take an east turn that would
prevent them from having to drive too close to the tornado,
but that turn ended up being a dead end. So
they had to go even farther south towards this tornado
and actually ended up traveling into the outer circulation, into
the debris core of this tornado, actually getting hit by
some debris. They had to drive then north out of
there and then continue along east try to get ahead
(24:59):
of this tornado. And so they were losing ground all
the while, and then eventually after they crossed US Highway
eighty one, that was kind of it was sort of
one of their last chances to get out of the
way of this thing. That they kept going because they
couldn't see what was happening. They could not see the tornado,
and they didn't realize by this point that it was
moving at highway speeds and it was starting to hook
(25:20):
to the north, and that it had this sub vortex,
this tornado within the tornado that you know, contained some
really really powerful winds. They later found winds in this tornado,
you know, well in excess to three hundred miles per hour,
And so they couldn't see this thing whenever it ran
them over. They didn't know that they needed to either
stop or turn north to get out of the way.
(25:41):
And you know I mean this, when this subbortex came
out of the it would have come out of the east.
I mean it just it was the last place where
they would have thought a tornado would come at them from.
But it caught them off guard. They came up against
the wrong tornado at the wrong time and the wrong place.
Speaker 6 (25:58):
You need to get below ground if you puss simply
can you know if it's on top of you, you
can't outrun it.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Don't a very large walk platforming and this to say,
spinning and getting faster and faster and faster carry.
Speaker 6 (26:11):
Back to you. All of a sudden it was over
them and it was around.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Around I believe it's right in there. But it's going
to be rain rapids. It is the most dangerous tornado
you can have. Because you can't.
Speaker 6 (26:26):
See these records. It's a gigantic tornado at least a
mile wide. I think we were seriously concerned. We were
on the air well ahead of time, even before the
watch was issued, saying, look, there's going to be tornadoes
in central Oklahoma. Make your plans now, do it now.
When they came back said it's two point six miles wide. Yeah,
(26:46):
I think it was surprised most everyone.
Speaker 7 (26:49):
If you were to say which is the safest chaser
that you know, I would say Tim Samaris is the
safest chaser. I saw him out there and he knew
when to back off. So the fact that this happened
on May thirty first, where he was caught in the
(27:10):
path is surreal to me. You know, this is the
person that I would last expect to be caught in
the tornado.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
One of our teammates, Matt Gritch, called us saying that
he was seeing rumors flying around that Tim, Carl and
Paul had been killed, and then he actually had gotten
some kind of message from Tim's son, Matt, telling him
that they had been killed in the al Reno tornado.
(27:38):
Different looking at rotating and it looks like get a
matter of time because.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
The rotation is getting stronger and drop stronger.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Garry all right, Well, he was traveling along this dirt
road looking for you know, injured people, you know, whatever
he could find. He saw this glint of white out
(28:08):
in a canola field, and you know, he went to
investigate further. It was you know, it was a sedan,
but it was it was just mangled, you know, it
looked like it had been stripped down basically to the chassis.
And he found him inside and didn't realize at first,
you know, who this guy was, but it kind of
seemed like he might be a storm chaser. There was
some kind of gear that was in the car that
(28:28):
was synonymous with storm chasers. And when he finally pulled
Tim's wallet, you know, out of his back pocket and
saw the name, you know, he finally you know, realized
who he was looking at because Tim, you know it,
Doug Girton had seen storm Chasers on Discovery Channel before,
and so you know, from that moment on, he he
did all his business with dispatch through his cell phone
because you know, he worried that you know, people listening
(28:50):
to a scanner picked this up, they would converge on
his location. So yeah, I mean it was you know,
when he found Tim, you know, that was officially the
first moment that you know, storm chasers had ever been
killed in a tornado, as hard as that is believed.
Speaker 5 (29:04):
You know, I've been doing this for twenty years.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
I enjoy the hell on it, I really do.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Out here watching the great clouds, the great storms.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
You never know exactly what you're Gonna find.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hangler. And a special thanks to
Brandley Hargrove, the author of The Man Who Caught the Storm.
The Life of legendary tornado chaser Tim Samars and What
a storm He chased? His final one, the al Reno
tornado in Oklahoma in May of twenty thirteen. He was
(29:38):
out there studying electromagnetic phenomenon and had brought all kinds
of equipment to photograph lightning, but dropped it all to
chase this super cell. The last storm Tim would chase,
and he did it with his son Paul. Both were
lost to this storm. The problem he couldn't see the
tornado and the tornado had within it sub vortexas that is,
(30:02):
this was a tornado with tornadoes inside it. He came
up against the wrong tornado, at the wrong time and
the wrong place. The Life of legendary storm chaser Tim
Samaris here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides. Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.