June 3, 2024 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, at 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 science’s every effort to divine its inner workings had ended in failure. Researchers all but gave up, until the arrival of an outsider. Brantley Hargrove is the author of The Man Who Caught the Storm: The Life of Legendary Tornado Chaser Tim Samaras.
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Episode Transcript
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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 into the
you know this through 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 uh 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,
(02:11):
the rest 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
(02:33):
violent thunderstorms that are known to produce tornadoes. And you know,
when he was a young kid he saw his first
funnel cloud in the sky. 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
(02:53):
do all sorts of explosives work for the military, and
basically these these guys are just geeks who used really
high tech research gradio 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
(03:15):
don't think he'd ever drawn one up. And so yeah,
he gets 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
(03:37):
it's this yellow sheet of paper onto which he's handwritten
his expertise, which includes working at a mom and pop
radio repair shop. I mean, it's not a whole lot there,
but yeah, 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, by the time Tim is, you know,
(04:00):
twenty years old, he's got a Pentagon security clearance. Brown
saw 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,
(04:20):
but by and large he was you know, he was
teaching himself. He was reading you know everything he could
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
(04:43):
evidence of pornatic quotation, but it can't necessarily tell you
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 smospheric scientist meteorologists,
you know, the government was just like, hey, look, let's
(05:04):
let's we can't even bother with trying to predict these things.
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
(05:25):
then the Weather Bureau. I mean, it was just it
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, and 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
(05:47):
had come a long way, but there was still a
lot 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 were we just had this really
essential tool come on the scene. We're learning quite a bit, however,
(06:10):
I mean, the mobile radar, even 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
(06:32):
broader storm environment. 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
in there in Huntsville. And you know, back in eighty
nine Huntsbill got hit by a really violent tornado. You know,
it killed I think a couple of dozen people. And
(06:52):
in the aftermath he heard a lot of weird things
that sort of struck him, and we're 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,
(07:15):
I felt these I felt these tremors coming through the ground.
And 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 shock wave.
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
(07:35):
actually did there were actually seismic signals being created by
these tornadoes. And so he 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 detect seismic signals of tornadoes and to give maybe
a little bit better of an advanced heads up. And
so he'd be built these devices, but you know, Frank
(07:58):
was not a storm chaser. He didn't really know how
to go find 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 legendary
(08:18):
storm chasers. Tim had seen this Nova documentary on PBS
a decade before, where these scientists from the National Severe
Storm Laboratories in Oklahoma University were going out chasing down
these tornadoes with this instrument that they developed called the
Totabal 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,
(08:40):
Tim had been captivated by this documentary, by this idea
of these scientists going 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 Samarais 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
(10:10):
our American stories and with Brandley 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 launch vehicle that was
supposed to be able to withstand a nuclear shockwave. And
(11:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
To that point.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
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.
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.
(12:00):
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
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
(12:21):
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.
Because tornadoes they swerve. I mean, they don't travel in
a straight line. They are all sorts of little uh
bobs and weeds in their tracks. And so that means
(12:41):
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 and the
year before and got really close, and I think he
was learning more and more just how close he needed
to be to pull this off. And so in Strap
Texas in two thousand and three, you know, there were
(13:03):
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 sized truck of amy. 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
(13:24):
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 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.
(13:46):
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 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
(14:08):
first time I really heard true fear in his voice.
But 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 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,
(14:30):
but he hasn't gotten that singular deployment that he's been
shooting for. And so, you know, he gets onto a
tornado near Woonsocket, South Dakota, and the dang thing it
keeps 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
(14:51):
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 very
late in tornado season. You know, after this, it looks
like there's 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 guy who's
with him notices the splash of golden sunlight refracting off
(15:16):
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. 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
(15:38):
is an enormous tornado on the horizon. I mean, in
my opinion, this is probably the biggest and most violent
tornado he's 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 asks, are we going to deploy
on that thing? And Tim's like, damn right. So he
(16:00):
approaches this thing down the highway and it's it's closing
it on the highway, and he realizes that is you know,
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,
(16:21):
and this thing's moving off to the northeast. The north,
there's a good grid of dirt roads. It's not optimal
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
(16:42):
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
he takes off and it's it's a hairy ride. I mean,
the road just turns to 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
(17:03):
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
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
(17:26):
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
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 4 (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. Can you sort of focused on something else?
Speaker 3 (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 4 (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 3 (18:13):
I've been chasing storms for fifteen tornadoes?
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Are right?
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Is that about right?
Speaker 5 (18:17):
Or? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (18:18):
You know I haven't been counting, you know, half of
the first fifty.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
Yeah, 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 path 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 Dixiality 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
(22:04):
research 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
(22:27):
a company lightning, 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, on 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,
(22:47):
it's it's way further to the north. But as the
shape of the 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
(23:09):
photography vehicle in northern Oklahoma 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 5 (23:27):
Tim what are you watching for?
Speaker 1 (23:29):
What are you chasing right now?
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Well, at the moment, we are looking for a very.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Special type of storm called a supercell.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
The supercell is a very violent storm that is very
capable of large hail and pretty destructive tornadoes, and so
we're looking for the formation at these particular thunderstorms right now,
especially in central Oklahoma. Even a long eye forty is
kind of where we're currently targeting.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
So, Tim, you know, I mean they went out after
the storm, as they usually would any tornado. 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 turned 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 corps 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 of this tornade,
(25:00):
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 to the north, and
(25:22):
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 of 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. And you
(25:42):
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 7 (25:58):
You need to get below ground, as you possed, simply.
Can you know if it's on top of you, you
can't outrun it.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Don't figure a very large walk latform me and this
thing is forming you, spinning, is getting faster and faster
and faster.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
Gary back to you.
Speaker 7 (26:12):
All of a sudden it was over them and it
was around.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Curtains around Yeah, I believe it's right in there, but
it's going to be rain rapids.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Is the most dangerous tornado you can have.
Speaker 7 (26:26):
Because you can't 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's two point six
miles wide. Yeah, I think it was surprised most everyone.
Speaker 6 (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.
(27:40):
Looking at rotating and it looked like just a matter
of time because.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
The rotation is getting stronger and drong, stronger.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Garry all right, Well, he was traveling along this dirt
road looking for you know, injured people, whatever he could find.
He saw this glint of white out in a Canola field,
(28:10):
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
Tim 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 was synonymous with
storm Chasers. And then when he finally pulled Tim's wallet,
(28:33):
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 to a scanner picked
this up, they would converge on his location. So yeah,
(28:54):
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 enjoyed the hell out it, I really do.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Out here watching the great clouds, the great storms 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 Hengler. 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 into the
you know this through 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 uh 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,
(02:11):
the rest 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
(02:33):
violent thunderstorms that are known to produce tornadoes. And you know,
when he was a young kid he saw his first
funnel cloud in the sky. 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
(02:53):
do all sorts of explosives work for the military, and
basically these these guys are just geeks who used really
high tech research gradio 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
(03:15):
don't think he'd ever drawn one up. And so yeah,
he gets 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
(03:37):
it's this yellow sheet of paper onto which he's handwritten
his expertise, which includes working at a mom and pop
radio repair shop. I mean, it's not a whole lot there,
but yeah, 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, by the time Tim is, you know,
(04:00):
twenty years old, he's got a Pentagon security clearance. Brown
saw 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,
(04:20):
but by and large he was you know, he was
teaching himself. He was reading you know everything he could
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
(04:43):
evidence of pornatic quotation, but it can't necessarily tell you
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 smospheric scientist meteorologists,
you know, the government was just like, hey, look, let's
(05:04):
let's we can't even bother with trying to predict these things.
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
(05:25):
then the Weather Bureau. I mean, it was just it
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, and 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
(05:47):
had come a long way, but there was still a
lot 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 were we just had this really
essential tool come on the scene. We're learning quite a bit, however,
(06:10):
I mean, the mobile radar, even 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
(06:32):
broader storm environment. 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
in there in Huntsville. And you know, back in eighty
nine Huntsbill got hit by a really violent tornado. You know,
it killed I think a couple of dozen people. And
(06:52):
in the aftermath he heard a lot of weird things
that sort of struck him, and we're 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,
(07:15):
I felt these I felt these tremors coming through the ground.
And 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 shock wave.
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
(07:35):
actually did there were actually seismic signals being created by
these tornadoes. And so he 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 detect seismic signals of tornadoes and to give maybe
a little bit better of an advanced heads up. And
so he'd be built these devices, but you know, Frank
(07:58):
was not a storm chaser. He didn't really know how
to go find 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 legendary
(08:18):
storm chasers. Tim had seen this Nova documentary on PBS
a decade before, where these scientists from the National Severe
Storm Laboratories in Oklahoma University were going out chasing down
these tornadoes with this instrument that they developed called the
Totabal 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,
(08:40):
Tim had been captivated by this documentary, by this idea
of these scientists going 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 Samarais 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
(10:10):
our American stories and with Brandley 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 launch vehicle that was
supposed to be able to withstand a nuclear shockwave. And
(11:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
To that point.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
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.
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.
(12:00):
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
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
(12:21):
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.
Because tornadoes they swerve. I mean, they don't travel in
a straight line. They are all sorts of little uh
bobs and weeds in their tracks. And so that means
(12:41):
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 and the
year before and got really close, and I think he
was learning more and more just how close he needed
to be to pull this off. And so in Strap
Texas in two thousand and three, you know, there were
(13:03):
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 sized truck of amy. 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
(13:24):
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 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.
(13:46):
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 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
(14:08):
first time I really heard true fear in his voice.
But 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 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,
(14:30):
but he hasn't gotten that singular deployment that he's been
shooting for. And so, you know, he gets onto a
tornado near Woonsocket, South Dakota, and the dang thing it
keeps 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
(14:51):
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 very
late in tornado season. You know, after this, it looks
like there's 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 guy who's
with him notices the splash of golden sunlight refracting off
(15:16):
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. 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
(15:38):
is an enormous tornado on the horizon. I mean, in
my opinion, this is probably the biggest and most violent
tornado he's 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 asks, are we going to deploy
on that thing? And Tim's like, damn right. So he
(16:00):
approaches this thing down the highway and it's it's closing
it on the highway, and he realizes that is you know,
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,
(16:21):
and this thing's moving off to the northeast. The north,
there's a good grid of dirt roads. It's not optimal
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
(16:42):
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
he takes off and it's it's a hairy ride. I mean,
the road just turns to 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
(17:03):
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
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
(17:26):
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
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 4 (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. Can you sort of focused on something else?
Speaker 3 (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 4 (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 3 (18:13):
I've been chasing storms for fifteen tornadoes?
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Are right?
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Is that about right?
Speaker 5 (18:17):
Or? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (18:18):
You know I haven't been counting, you know, half of
the first fifty.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
Yeah, 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 path 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 Dixiality 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
(22:04):
research 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
(22:27):
a company lightning, 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, on 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,
(22:47):
it's it's way further to the north. But as the
shape of the 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
(23:09):
photography vehicle in northern Oklahoma 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 5 (23:27):
Tim what are you watching for?
Speaker 1 (23:29):
What are you chasing right now?
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Well, at the moment, we are looking for a very.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Special type of storm called a supercell.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
The supercell is a very violent storm that is very
capable of large hail and pretty destructive tornadoes, and so
we're looking for the formation at these particular thunderstorms right now,
especially in central Oklahoma. Even a long eye forty is
kind of where we're currently targeting.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
So, Tim, you know, I mean they went out after
the storm, as they usually would any tornado. 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 turned 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 corps 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 of this tornade,
(25:00):
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 to the north, and
(25:22):
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 of 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. And you
(25:42):
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 7 (25:58):
You need to get below ground, as you possed, simply.
Can you know if it's on top of you, you
can't outrun it.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Don't figure a very large walk latform me and this
thing is forming you, spinning, is getting faster and faster
and faster.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
Gary back to you.
Speaker 7 (26:12):
All of a sudden it was over them and it
was around.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Curtains around Yeah, I believe it's right in there, but
it's going to be rain rapids.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Is the most dangerous tornado you can have.
Speaker 7 (26:26):
Because you can't 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's two point six
miles wide. Yeah, I think it was surprised most everyone.
Speaker 6 (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.
(27:40):
Looking at rotating and it looked like just a matter
of time because.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
The rotation is getting stronger and drong, stronger.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Garry all right, Well, he was traveling along this dirt
road looking for you know, injured people, whatever he could find.
He saw this glint of white out in a Canola field,
(28:10):
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
Tim 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 was synonymous with
storm Chasers. And then when he finally pulled Tim's wallet,
(28:33):
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 to a scanner picked
this up, they would converge on his location. So yeah,
(28:54):
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 enjoyed the hell out it, I really do.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Out here watching the great clouds, the great storms 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 Hengler. 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
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