The Story of America's Most Legendary Storm Chaser: Tim Samaras

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Let's take a listen. Tim was just this middle class kid from the suburbs of Denver. He 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 taking apart his parents' appliances. For some reason, he just really liked to take apart the blender or the television set just to figure out what made them go. He simply couldn't take for granted the fact that they actually worked. He had this innate curiosity.

And so, you know, his dad, just to keep him away from their appliances, he actually went out to the neighborhood, out to the, you know, this really outlying community, and would pick up like these old radios, these big radios with the dials on them. And he'd bring them back to Tim just to give him something to tinker with. And Tim would, sometimes he'd fix 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, when he was probably six years old, Wizard of Oz was on prime time.

It was a 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, you know, the rest of the film really didn't interest him all that much. He'd get kind of bored once they started hitting the yellow brick road.

But, you know, forevermore he would be drawn to that image. And, you know, he couldn't believe that there were such things near his home, and he wanted to see one for himself someday. He's near Denver, so he's got these storms coming up against the Rockies, these 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.

So, I mean, that 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 these guys are just geeks who use really high-tech, research-grade electronics to study all sorts of violent forces, among other things. And so Tim walks in, you know, I think he's 20 or 21, walking in with holes in his jeans and a T-shirt. And, you know, he doesn't even bring in his own resume. I mean, I don't think he'd ever drawn one up. And so, you know, you get to talking to the guy who runs the outfit, 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 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 going to give this kid a chance. And he does. And, you know, by the time Tim is, you know, 20 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 Skywarn, 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, 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 the 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 tornadic rotation. 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 isn't one. Tornadoes were so inexplicable, so poorly understood, that atmospheric scientists, meteorologists, you know, the government was just like, hey, look, 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, with 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 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 into the 1950s.

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 had come a long way, but there were still a lot of unanswered questions. We had just developed in the 60s and 70s Doppler radar, and then mobile Doppler didn't even come onto the scene until the 90s, which would allow us to scan at somewhat close range these tornadoes in detail. And so we were, we just had this really essential tool come on the scene.

We're learning quite a bit. However, I mean, the mobile radar, even when you can drag it out into close proximity with a storm, it left some blind spots. It couldn't scan in that lowest 50 meters or so. 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? And so that was kind of one place where Tim was hoping he could fill in the blanks. Frank was the spark. He was this explosives expert in there in Huntsville. And, you know, back in 89, Huntsville 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 him and were, in some ways, they related to his own research. He was hearing that there were all these people who were dealing these tremors through the ground as the tornado approached.

I mean, these weren't yahoos. They 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 tremors coming through the ground. And so he was like, okay, I mean, could a tornado measurably transfer energy into the ground to the extent that you could actually create some kind of shockwave?

And what he found, you know, whenever he went to a USGS Geological Service site where they had some geophones in the ground, he found out that they actually did. There were actually seismic signals being created by these tornadoes. So he set out to build this device with federal funding that he hoped would be, you know, serve 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 built these devices, but, you know, Frank 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 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 storm chasers. Tim had seen this NOVA documentary on PBS a decade before where these scientists from the National Severe Storm Laboratories and Oklahoma University were going out chasing down these tornadoes with this instrument that they'd 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 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.

And you've been listening to Brantley Hargrove talk about the life of legendary storm chaser Tim Samaras. An unusual kid indeed. He didn't play with action figures. He took apart his parents' appliances, then ultimately strangers' appliances, garage sale appliances, the like. Anything he could take apart and discover how the thing worked.

Most kids, well, they would have just taken for granted that they actually worked and left it at that. We learn 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 gut to bring Tim Samaras into the fold.

When we come back, more of the story of legendary storm chaser Tim Samaras here on Our American Stories. Sofa start at just $699. Enjoy a no-risk experience with pet-friendly, stain-resistant, and changeable slipcovers made with performance fabric. Experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing.

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Let's pick up where we last left off. 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 the tornado, you know, not 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 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 what Tim did is 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. It was about, you know, 20 inches across, about 6 inches tall, you know, sort of conical in shape, kind of like a traditional Vietnamese hat. And it was filled with pressure transducers, sensors for temperature and humidity, and this data logger that would record measurements from all these sensors 10 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 in situ 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. 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 the core, he's going to 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.

There are all sorts of little bobs and weaves 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 more and more just how close he needed to be to pull this off.

And so in Stratford, Texas, in 2003, you know, there were all sorts of risks that he was courting that day. I mean, as he maneuvered in front of this oncoming tornado in a Texas panhandle, there was baseball-sized hail coming down. I mean, he could easily have been brained by a baseball-sized chunk of hail.

I mean, that stuff's fatal. So he jumps out of his minivan. 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 30 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 and the outer circulation. And they're getting battered by some pretty intense winds. I mean, winds approaching 100 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 poles. 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. I mean, he managed to get out.

But 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, 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 field the whole time. Tim can't deploy on a tornado in the field. He needs it 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 24th, 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 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 of the backside of a storm to the east. And Tim jumps into the minivan 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 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 partner is with him.

It's his brother-in-law, Pat Porter. He actually asks, are we going to deploy on that thing? And Tim's like, damn right. And so he approaches this thing down the highway. It's closing in on the highway. And he realizes that his approach is all wrong.

He can't deploy here. He can't accurately gauge its forward speed, its 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 to the north. And this thing's moving off to the northeast. To 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 going to 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 he takes off, and it's a hairy ride. I mean, the road just turns to cake batter. There's 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 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. For the first time, we had direct measurements from the core of a violent tornado. I mean, that was just something that the research community wasn't sure that they would ever actually have. I mean, his name was on the lips of every atmospheric scientist in the world today.

I mean, that was a huge moment. And it brought him a certain amount of fame. He was on the cover of National Geographic. He was on CNN with Soledad O'Brien.

He 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 freaking out? And you're sort of focused on something else? Actually, I'm pretty focused on our safety, certainly. And I'm focused on getting the data and getting in the right spot. You only have one chance to do it, and I want to make sure to be at the right spot. Yeah, but you've got lots of chances to have near misses, and you've had lots of near misses.

You've been doing this for 15 years. Yeah, I've been chasing storms for 15 years. How many tornadoes are in? Is that about right, or is that low? You know, I haven't been counting.

After the first 50. Yeah, I've seen quite a few. He went on Oprah. I mean, this was a big moment. And Tim, his life changed profoundly after that.

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 Samaras. And what a story indeed. Tim Samaras 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 you've got to get close. And finally, after 15 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.

When we come back, more of the story of Tim Samaras here on Our American Stories. Enjoy a no-risk experience with pet-friendly, stain-resistant, and changeable slipcovers made with performance fabric. Experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing.

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That's K-N-I-X dot com, code FLOW15 for 15% off. Nix, for your leaks, for your life. And we continue with our American stories and with Brantley Hargrove, telling the story of legendary tornado chaser Tim Samaras. Let's continue with the story. 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's 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 of different options, but, you know, just none of it seemed to stick. And then he started going out and chasing with him. 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, 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 him 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 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 these other researchers with him who surrounded the tornado with these sedan-mounted sensors. They would sample the environment feeding the tornado. Basically, you know, what in the environment is making this tornado form? What's making it intensify?

What's making it unravel? And so what I think he was hoping was that his data paired with 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 on these really bad days. You know, these days like, you know, in 2011 with the Dixie Alley outbreak or, you know, Moore, Oklahoma, 2013.

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 2013, Tim was a part of a lightning research project funded by DARPA, a federal agency. And they were 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. They were hoping to understand some of these fundamental mysteries of lightning and some of the other electromagnetic phenomena that accompany lightning. And so that was their main mission at that point.

But they had also brought along a sedan for sidechases. So on that day, May 31st, 2013, they knew that there was going to be a big storm. 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 way further to the north. But as the shape of the day kind of came into sharper focus, as 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. 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 intensify.

They were in perfect position. Tim, what are you watching for? What are you chasing right now? Well, at the moment, we are looking for the very special type of storm called a supercell. A 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 of these particular thunderstorms right now, especially in central Oklahoma.

Even along I-40 is kind of where we're currently targeting. 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 south, east, 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, 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 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 toward 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 to try to get ahead of this tornado.

And so they were losing ground all the while. And then eventually, after they crossed U.S. Highway 81, that was kind of sort of one of their last chances to get out of the way of this thing. But 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 that it had this sub vortex, this tornado within the tornado that, you know, contains some really, really powerful winds. They later found winds in the tornado, you know, well in excess of 300 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 know, when this sub vortex came out of the, 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 in the wrong place. You need to get below ground if you possibly can. You know, if it's on top of you, you can't outrun it, don't try it. We've got a very large wall cloud forming. And this thing is forming rapidly. This thing is spinning, it's getting faster and faster and faster. Gary, back to you.

All of a sudden, it was over them and it was around. We've got rotating rain curtains around the wall cloud. Gary, I believe it's right in there, but it's going to be rain wrapped. This is the most dangerous tornado you can have because you can't see it coming at all. I appreciate these reports. It's a gigantic tornado, at least a mile wide. 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 and said it's 2.6 miles wide, I think it was a surprise to most everyone. If you were to say, which is the safest chaser that you know, I would say Tim Samaras is the safest chaser. I saw him out there and he knew when to back off. So the fact that this happened on May 31st, where he was caught in the path, is surreal to me. This is the person that I would last expect to be caught in the tornado. One of our teammates, Matt Grich, 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 El Reno tornado.

This thing is big and it is me looking, it's rotating and it looks like to me it's just a matter of time because the rotation is getting stronger and stronger, Gary. Well, he was traveling along this dirt road looking for, you know, injured people, whatever he could find. You saw this glint of white out in a canola field. And, you know, when he went to investigate further, it was, you know, it was a sedan, but 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, you know, out of his back pocket and saw the name, you know, he finally realized who he was looking at. Because Tim, you know, Doug Gertin had seen storm chasers on Discovery Channel before.

And so, you know, from that moment on, he did all this business with dispatch through his cell phone because, you know, he worried that, you know, people listening to a scanner pick 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 to believe. You know, I've been doing this for 20 years. I enjoy the hell out here.

I really do. Out here watching the great clouds, the great storms, you never know exactly what you're going to find. And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to Brantley Hargrove, the author of The Man Who Caught the Storm, the life of legendary tornado chaser Tim Samaras. And what a storm he chased, his final one, the El Reno tornado in Oklahoma in May of 2013. He was out there studying electromagnetic phenomenon and had brought all kinds of equipment to photograph lightning but dropped it all to chase this supercell, 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-vortexes. That is, 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 Samaras, here on Our American Stories. Behind every successful business is a vision. Bringing it to life takes more than effort, it takes the right financial foundation and support. That's where Chase for Business comes in.

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