The Man Who Caught the Storm

by Brantley Hargrove

  NOAA had only requested a simple pressure recorder, but Tim has decided the task is far too uncomplicated. Like his chase vehicles, Tim’s probe will amass as many gadgets as it can bear. Plus, if the device is already inside the vortex, why not collect a few other data points while there? He has in mind a complete weather station, equipped with temperature, humidity, and pressure sensors—a much more elaborate piece of equipment.

  The project is an exceedingly unusual one for ARA, which typically sticks to military and national security applications over oddball weather science. But Tim is obstinate, cranking out draft after draft, each with the input of a review group of his peers. The work is far more than Tim can do alone. Cramming a twelve-bit, sixty-four-channel datalogger, fifteen pressure transducers, as well as sensors for humidity and temperature, into a space roughly the size of a shoebox is a bit like gaming out a three-dimensional puzzle. There may be only a single workable configuration.

  Luckily, Tim belongs to a company with a motley pool of brainiacs. Over lunchtime bull sessions, he and the crew hammer out the details of components, overall design, time frame, and cost. To develop the miniature data-acquisition system, which will record measurements from the various on-board sensors, he taps his old buddy Bob Lynch, a software and hardware magician. Julian Lee, a young whiz from Caltech, has expertise in fluid mechanics and can make sense of the turbulent, debris-choked wind flow. Heyman, the engineer who drew up the launcher design, assists with the scale-down, from ICBM launcher to car-tire-size weather instrument.

  Finally, after much deliberating and revision, Tim nails the design: a squat cone some twenty inches in diameter, and a little less than six inches tall. He calls it the Hardened In Situ Tornado Pressure Recorder, or HITPR for short. Now comes the pitch. Why should the NOAA judges award this grant to Tim, who is not a meteorologist or a scientist of any stripe? To the senior researchers behind the bid request, he will be an unknown quantity, with a wholly unconventional area of expertise compared to the atmospheric scientists with whom he’s competing.

  Yet that outside engineering expertise might just give Tim an edge where it counts. NOAA is looking for something that can fare better than TOTO in tornadic winds, and of this Tim and his shop of engineers have no doubt: TOTO’s shape was an afterthought, while HITPR’s aerodynamic shell is the product of meticulous design and calculation. On the inside, its instrumentation is research grade and built to specifications. Whereas TOTO documented conditions once per second with the technology of its time—on paper, with a mechanical impact recorder, like a seismograph—HITPR’s onboard datalogger will sample the environment electronically, ten times each second.

  HITPR is the Corvette to TOTO’s Model T: a sleek update with all the latest bells and whistles, built to shed the wind.

  The real selling point, though, is what Tim believes his device can do for science. Up to now, tornado wind speeds have been derived through the forensic examination of structural damage. Put simply, what would it take to bring this building down? It’s a lower bound, which means that if a record-breaking gust flattens a poorly constructed house, no one will ever know how fast the wind really was. The surveyor can only conclude that, say, a 130-mile-per-hour gust was more than equal to the task. HITPR, Tim explains in his application, will provide a far more accurate wind-speed estimate by basing it on direct pressure and direction measurements—data points that simply do not exist at ground level.

  He can’t overstate this point: there has always been a blind spot at the place we most want to see. The ground level is where we live, and in tornadoes it’s where we die. Yet the tornado has remained untouchable at the surface. TOTO couldn’t survive. Radar can’t get there. But HITPR can.

  In the long lineage of tornado probes, Tim’s is the first to be inspired by the shock wave—and the first to be shaped by an engineer whose laboratory is the test range. Tim’s gig at DRI and then ARA has never felt exactly like work. It’s more like he’s been transported from his boyhood bedroom floor and his old radios to a place where the toys are exponentially more expensive, and the stakes are as high as they come. But this project—his first as principal investigator—feels different. It’s something closer to a calling, as if this is what he was put on the earth to do.

  If HITPR can provide the answers to some of the enigmatic questions that linger—Is the core warm or cool? What are its approximate ground velocities? How far does pressure fall?—then the how and why behind tornado formation can begin to reveal themselves. Its data could be assimilated into a tornado model along with radar and weather-balloon measurements, providing an unprecedented picture of the vortex. Perhaps one day—if the device goes into production—scientists, chasers, companies, and weather firms alike could contribute to a database. Structural engineers could have access to measurements gleaned not by educated guesses but by a finely calibrated instrument. It’s a tall order to build a single-family house that can survive a Jarrell tornado, but the instrument might just give engineers a fighting chance—at safer homes, offices, hospitals. That’s worth something.

  As the submission deadline looms, Tim and Brown work through Thanksgiving Day of 1998 and into the wee hours, refining the proposal. Exhausted but hopeful, Tim mails his design and pitch to NOAA. Then, for nearly six months, Tim waits. If approved, HITPR will be the first project he has shepherded from conception to development. Tim is cautiously optimistic, but the guys at ARA are confident. “We thought that he would get the grant just because he put so much effort into it,” Brown says.

  The proposal is received by none other than Dr. Al Bedard and Howie Bluestein, along with a third senior NOAA scientist, Joe Golden. These men know better than anyone else the agony of the hunt. If they have learned anything from TOTO, it is that storm-chasing experience is absolutely paramount. If the applicant can’t find tornadoes and maneuver safely around them, the experiment is doomed to fail. Secondly, at some 400 pounds and as cumbersome as an oil drum, there had never been time to deploy more than one TOTO (and in any case, only one was ever built). What attracts them to Tim’s proposal is that it provides plans not for one HITPR, but for seven to ten, intended for deployment in succession. This, Bedard, Golden, and Bluestein agree, will elevate the odds that at least one might yield a direct strike. Furthermore, unlike TOTO, the turtle can easily be handled by a single man.

  “There were three or four good responses, including Tim’s,” Bedard says. “We as reviewers thought Tim’s approach had the best chance of success.” Bedard and his reviewers are unanimous in their decision.

  Before this process began, Bedard knew nothing of Tim Samaras. Secretly, though, he had hoped that someone like Tim would come along—someone other than a meteorologist who could chase storms and design the heck out of the thing.

  In 1999, the Department of Commerce issues a $74,934 grant for Phase I development. By ARA standards, this is a pittance, but it’s enough for a prototype. Tim’s dream is made flesh: a fifty-pound hunk of metal and electronics that looks like a traffic cone melting onto hot asphalt. Tim paints the shell bright orange, a tribute to Tatom’s snail. In homage to the most recent probe effort, where the devices were dubbed E-Turtles, Tim starts calling his device the turtle.

  He cannot wait to test his creation, and it’s from the roof of Tim’s minivan that the turtle gets its first taste of the wind. Tim straps the instrument to a piece of plywood and a quad-disk pressure sensor, and floors the minivan at seventy-five miles an hour along a downhill grade near the office. The wind velocities are weak (barely F0) compared with what the turtle will one day experience—but also intensely turbulent, according to Tim and Lee’s analysis. It’s a good first sign.

  For a stronger test, they travel with HITPR to the University of Washington’s Aeronautical Laboratory in Seattle and, for a fee, place the device in the facility’s wind tunnel. As smoke accompanies the artificial gale rushing over the turtle, Tim and Lee see a perfect “teardrop plume,” not a chaotic wash, form in its wake. They expose
it to velocities ranging from fifty-three miles per hour up to two hundred. It seems entirely possible that winds of this magnitude would send the turtle tumbling. But—as Heyman predicted—the opposite happens. Blasted with winds of over 150 miles per hour, the device holds fast. The load cells beneath the turtle even register a downward pressure. The faster the winds, the greater the downward pressure on HITPR’s front edge. When Tim sees this, he knows his calculations are valid. Even better, the turtle actually seems to prefer a fluttering, turbulent flow. There is little doubt now: barring impact with a wind-driven sedan, his invention should survive a tornado.

  The last challenge will be to measure the actual barometric pressure, and not some artifact introduced by the turtle’s steadfast presence. With the pressure highest on the side facing into the wind and lowest at the back, Lee develops algorithms to determine not only which of HITPR’s ports is recording the actual pressure, but also a solid estimate of the wind speed it indicates. This is the finishing touch before the turtle is ready to enter the wild. Then the real work can begin. “Getting an actual hit on HITPR,” Lee says, will be “a whole other level of difficulty.”

  In early 2000, Tim travels to Washington, DC, for the second, more stringent round of funding. Before a panel of program administrators from the Department of Commerce, he defends his prototype and outlines the next phase of the turtle’s development: to build a fleet of the probes, and to field them in Tornado Alley. Convinced by his pitch and the elegance of HITPR’s design, the department and NOAA sign off on Phase II and cut ARA a check for nearly $300,000.

  What began as absent tinkering, on the floor of a little boy’s bedroom strewn with transistors, diodes, and old radios, has set Tim on a path. DRI and ARA have given him the skills. And the singular instrument called the turtle might just be the tool needed to divine the dread silhouette he first glimpsed as it churned toward Dorothy and Toto. Unlike the tumbling farmhouse, however, his probe will stand while everything else falls. If all goes according to plan, the turtles will enter a realm Tim has seen only at safe distances. This, he understands, will require the acceptance of an altogether novel kind of risk. Tatom’s snail was a sawed-off 12-gauge; close was good enough. But close won’t mean much to the turtle. This rifle bullet is built to pierce the heart and enter the core. Unless it does, his mission will fail.

  He will have to wait until he hears the roar. He will have to watch it come on, until he can see the debris and soil lifting into the vortex. Then and only then can he activate the recorder, plant his device, and flee as fast as his V-6 will carry him. With the right approach, the right escape route, he can finally steal away with the dragon’s treasure.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  * * *

  A TURTLE IN THE WILD

  TIM HAS NEVER seemed like the kind of man to buy into providence; his engineer’s brain is far too practical for fate. Yet the following year, just as Tim is looking to test his brand-new device, opportunity again seeks him out.

  The meteorological community tends to sit up and take notice anytime someone steps forward with a credible plan to penetrate the tornado core. And in 2001, Tim’s project comes to the attention of Anton Seimon, a South African storm chaser with the backing of the National Geographic Society’s Expeditions Council. Seimon has been tapped by NatGeo to lead a tornado-research expedition for the spring storm season. While Tim is polishing off the construction of his turtles, Seimon is finalizing a team of leading chasers and scientists. At the helm is one of severe weather’s biggest names: Erik Rasmussen, a coordinator for the first VORTEX research project. And leading in the field is Albert Pietrycha, a thirty-four-year-old National Severe Storms Laboratory student researcher and expert chaser, known among his brethren by the moniker Al-nado.

  As the three players outline their expedition’s goals and roster, Tim’s name finds its way onto the short list. Rasmussen is curious about the rumors he’s recently heard: “This guy Tim Samaras is doing interesting stuff, developing new probes to deploy in tornadoes.” He wants to see what Tim can do.

  And Seimon is familiar enough with Tim to offer a second vote in his favor. The two have crossed paths before on the Colorado plains and hit it off. They’re two minds similarly obsessed, both having followed odd paths to atmospheric research. Seimon is not a degreed meteorologist either; he’s a geographer by training. His specialty lies in the remote ranges of the Peruvian Andes, their ancient glaciers and unique highland ecology. But his heart resides in the bland topography of the Great Plains. Like Tim, every time storm season rolls around, he’s sucked back into Tornado Alley.

  When Seimon, Rasmussen, and Pietrycha reach out to Tim, he doesn’t hesitate to sign on. It’s as if he’s been waiting for them to ask. Tim knows that HITPR, like Tatom’s snail, is all theory until it enters the field of battle. After years of development, he’s dying to test the turtle in a real storm. To do it with a dedicated, fully resourced expedition, led by seasoned experts, sounds like something out of a dream.

  Tim’s probe will be one tool among many on the Swiss Army knife of a mission. Pietrycha will be “field commander,” guiding a retinue that includes Tim’s tricked-out minivan, a brigade of vehicle-mounted weather stations called mesonets, a small fleet of unmanned drones, and a NatGeo film crew to capture the endeavor for a forthcoming television special. Rasmussen will guide the whole convoy from afar. With access to formidable forecasting resources at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, he’ll monitor the weather and direct the team to each day’s most promising storms.

  As Seimon prepares his final proposal for NatGeo, highlighting each element and composing biographies of the participants, he asks Tim for a résumé. In return, he receives a paragraph. Apart from the handwritten page he had handed to Larry Brown more than twenty years ago, Tim has never written a professional curriculum vitae.

  “Where did you get your degree?” Seimon asks.

  “Alameda High School,” Tim replies matter-of-factly.

  Seimon goes slack jawed. It has simply never occurred to him that Tim, accomplished as he is, isn’t a college-educated man. Seimon briefly panics. You’re kidding me, he thinks. This is not going to look good. It will look like we have rank amateurs.

  But, on the other hand, who else is doing this stuff?

  For its part, NatGeo loves the addition and is only too willing to underwrite the labors of a researcher whose mission is so fraught with jeopardy and photogenic drama. “It’s a great story line for them,” Seimon says. “The cowboy science of trying to get in front of tornadoes.”

  The organization approves Seimon’s grant, offering funding for a monthlong effort. Tim’s turtle is ultimately billed as one of the expedition’s primary components. The mission’s title underscores the danger the team is prepared to confront: “Inside Tornadoes: A Research Initiative.” This work isn’t for the faint of heart. Seimon promises “the most ambitious effort ever attempted to obtain measurements within tornadoes.”

  For Tim, this is an especially propitious moment. It’s been three long years of grant writing, research, and development. The hunt now finally begins. From Texas up through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, all the way north to Minnesota, the team will go wherever it must to find its quarry. The unknown feels rich with promise and possibility.

  It won’t last.

  And the experience will hold lessons that both guide and dog Tim for the rest of his life.

  * * *

  On May 20, the six-vehicle convoy embarks. They have one month from NatGeo—and a target zone of more than 100,000 square miles in which to find the swirling wind. From the very first day, every member can hear the clock ticking. They set out from Boulder toward gathering storms in far-eastern Colorado. But that same afternoon, they’re thwarted, as a late cold front ices the atmosphere’s volatility. They return amid drifting snow, and for the next four days, the skies are lifeless.

  When the weather pattern revives, the chasing proves . . . complicated. Leading s
uch a large contingent requires a decisive command structure. But once they reach the Texas Panhandle for their first intercept attempts, coordination issues start to plague the squadron. With cell towers few and far between, the team suffers repeated “communication lapses” at moments when they can least afford to lose contact. Having never chased together before, they have no cohesion, no common pace; the slower drivers keep splitting the team up. When they do manage to stay together, other problems sprout like mushrooms: Mother Nature isn’t delivering or the team’s leaders pick the wrong storms.

  On May 29, they set out from Amarillo in pursuit of a broken string of cells strung along a strong Texas dry line—the classic plains setup. Chasers know to target what they call the tail-end Charlie, the southernmost cell in the line of storms, which is usually the one to cleave away, go tornadic, and thrive on an unobstructed river of fuel. That’s just what Pietrycha’s convoy does. They intercept the southern storm, a “stunningly beautiful, reddish-hued sky sculpture,” Seimon says, and follow it all the way past the Caprock Canyons to Turkey, Texas. But it never touches down. In the meantime, they miss a mighty F3 wedge roughly a hundred miles to the north, near White Deer. A few other chasers somehow made the right call, detecting some signal in the surface weather map. Whatever that was, none of the forecasters on the team saw it.