The road trip to the target is a rump-numbing haul no matter what. It’s the sound track, though, that makes it feel like an eternity to Seimon. Gone are the Clapton CDs that were once in heavy rotation. Tim insists they listen exclusively to the Weather Channel, which he streams via satellite. Through Colorado and into Oklahoma, the saw-toothed mountains melt into the southern plains to Muzak, “this Kenny G stuff,” Seimon says, punctuated by on-the-hour weather updates.
In the heat of the chase, Tim communicates on only one frequency, and this single-minded enthusiasm either infects a man or exhausts him. Tim inveighs endlessly about the mission, his customized chase vehicle, and epic storms of yesteryear, as though there were no life outside the chase. By his way of thinking, they’re currently bearing down on a storm that’s about to expend a nuclear warhead’s worth of energy. What else could possibly be as interesting?
In the many thousands of miles that Tim and Seimon have traveled together over the last two years, the pair have spoken surprisingly little about family or work—delving neither into Tim’s explosives expertise or Seimon’s expeditions into the Andes. It’s not that Tim is uninterested or intensely reserved. On and off the road, he’s one of the most genial guys any of his friends know. He’s generous with advice for the newbies who look up to him, and a cheerful troubleshooter for any chaser whose ham radio is on the fritz. But underneath all that there’s an undeniable edge to Tim—and it rises to the surface just when cumulus clouds harden into anvils.
In recent years, skepticism has been growing about the viability of Tim’s mission. Folks such as Erik Rasmussen had demonstrated initial excitement, and even offered assistance. But as more seasons pass and “close” is all Tim has to show for his efforts, the meteorological community’s curiosity fades back into its prior cynicism. Tim has something to prove. To the doubtful academics and researchers, to anyone who questions whether a mere chaser can bring home storm science’s holy grail, Tim wants to show off just what he can do.
Seimon understands the frustration—“We both have had to swim against the tide at different points,” he says—and wants to help Tim channel it. He’s ready to stick with Tim, even through the Muzak. Both men are “absolutely mesmerized by the atmosphere,” Seimon says. “And when you’re clear about that, everything else is a detail to be worked out.”
With the windows down, the pair enters the Texas Panhandle under a rapidly graying afternoon sky. Tim and Seimon listen to the moaning of power lines in the wind, savoring the subtle shifts in pitch as the gale slackens and swells. The stage is just about set. A line of thunderstorms now develops before them, stretching south to north, from Dalhart, Texas, to Boise City, Oklahoma. Within a few hours, fifty miles of supercells will pop up along the dry line, strung like pearls.
* * *
At a little before six that evening, Tim’s chase vehicle enters the crossroads hamlet of Stratford, Texas, one of those lonely, wind-scoured outposts afloat on an unbroken ocean of grain. Bewhiskered by quivering antennas, and the white orb of a portable satellite dome, the Dodge Caravan cruises down an empty US Route 287.
Clouds as dull as slag have choked off the light of a late-spring sun, bringing an early dusk to the Panhandle. The asphalt is wet and shining like obsidian from the passing storm. Tim guides the minivan through town, craning his neck for a glimpse of the western horizon through the gaps between trees and the little houses with dusty hardpan lawns.
That’s when he catches sight of it: a lowering too deep to be the wall cloud of the mesocyclone, too solid, too big, too well-defined, for a false-alarm “scudnado.” Though Tim glimpses the shape only for an instant, his every instinct signals tornado. Seimon doesn’t see it yet, off to the northwest, but he knows Tim isn’t in the habit of crying wolf. He begins filming through the windshield for the scientific record. “Time: 22:45:21,” Seimon narrates. “We’re going to take a look.”
Stratford’s residential sector sweeps past, its water tower, then a series of corrugated-steel buildings. Tim accelerates, and the minivan’s motor thrums. At a break in Stratford’s meager skyline, Tim spots the silhouette at last. “Oh, my God,” he says. “We’ve got a wedge on the ground.”
“Wedge on the ground,” Seimon repeats, though he can’t quite see it through the rain-bleared windshield. “Wipers, please.” The blades slash across the glass. He pans the camera frame over the northwestern horizon, where the low cloud bank hovers parallel to the smooth plane of the prairie, then suddenly plummets to earth. There it is, the telltale funnel. “Oh, Jesus,” he gasps. “Wedge tornado on the ground.”
They race northwest out of town down 287, and ten minutes later Seimon is filming through the driver’s window. Beyond Tim’s nose, he sees an inky mass of shifting shapes tickling the endless drip-irrigated cotton tracts. A series of vortices ride the outer rim of a broad tornadic circulation before fading, replaced by other thin twisters. This is a classic multiple-vortex tornado. At a certain point, as its strength oscillates, there seems to be nothing out there but a lazily swirling fog, a ghostly carousel. Then it builds and darkens again.
Soon, they are facing the darkness directly, within minutes of its most powerful winds. As they enter the rain curtain at the front of the storm, the tornado drifts neither left nor right. Instead, it only advances, growing ever larger. The beast is coming for them. Or, rather, they’re coming for it.
Tim and Seimon now leave behind even the most audacious chasers, parked along the highway, some hunched over tripod-mounted cameras. Tim advises Seimon to prepare himself for the hail core, which runs up against the outer edge of the updraft. They can feel themselves cross over the instinctive margin of safety and into dangerous territory. They are entering no-man’s-land, the place considered too close, a violation of storm chasing’s cardinal rule. Once, near towns like Last Chance, Colorado, Tim obeyed the one rule. He kept his distance.
Now he is placing himself in the crosshairs of a tornado, and what strikes him and Seimon most is that this is no accident. They haven’t lost sight of the thing in the rain or misjudged the course and strayed into its approach. In fact, they have predicted the tornado’s path with rare precision. It’s not so much frightening to find themselves so close as it is surreal. What they’re doing isn’t storm chasing anymore. It’s something else. Tim knows they don’t belong here, but this is what it takes.
The snap of baseball-size hail against the roof brings them back to the reality of their position. “Oh, my God, that was, ah . . . Tim, you’ve gotta get out of the car in this. Be careful.”
Tim sees the tornado churning toward their stretch of highway, closer now and maintaining the same trajectory. Apart from the hailstones large enough to kill, the duo are in perfect position for a turtle deployment.
“Ready?” Tim says.
He swings the minivan around into the opposite lane, the cabin resounding with the erratic tattoo of heavy ice against metal. “Watch your head, my friend,” Seimon cautions, and looks out onto the approaching circulation, a diffusion of drifting cloud and tightly spun vortices. “Tim, it’s very close in.” The vortex is approaching at nearly thirty-five miles per hour. “You’re in position. You’re in position.”
Before Tim can open the door, there comes a startling thwack against the roof, heavier than before. “Oh, shit,” Tim cries. “That was huge!”
“I don’t know . . . shit,” Seimon says. “You can’t go out.”
Tim ignores him. “Let’s go.”
“Okay . . . debris half a mile and closing.”
Tim drives roughly fifty yards back to the south in an attempt to escape the hail core, watching for the left or right drift. He slams the brakes. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Seimon begins to step out, but the roof of the minivan rings with another deafening impact. “Oh, shit!” he cries.
“God damn,” Tim shouts. “Woohoo!”
He crawls from the front seat into the back, lifts a floor panel, and begins to extricate a turtle. Tim grimaces as he hefts the
tire-size object. “How are we doing?” he asks
“We’ve got baseballs falling.” Seimon winces at the pearlescent orbs streaking to earth. “These will take your head off, man. Just sling the thing out! Winds increasing slowly. Watch your head!”
Tim ducks out of the van, holding the turtle high above his shaggy crown of hair as a shield. Hailstones thud dully against the grass all around him. He drops the device some fifteen feet from the minivan. He casts a quick glance at the approaching tornado then lifts his hands defensively as he runs back to the vehicle. “Watch your head, watch your head, watch your head!” Seimon shouts.
The camera registers the sound of the sliding door slamming shut.
“Can you hear it?” Tim says, unmistakable glee in his voice as he lunges into the driver’s seat. He’s not talking about the thud of hail now.
A low-amplitude roar emanates from the tattered clouds spiraling toward their location—it’s a steady, unstoppable crescendo. “Holy, Jesus, can I ever hear it!” Seimon says. “Okay. Time: 22:58:17. GPS set point.”
The minivan tears along the highway as the rain overtakes them, and the wind screams out of the south. Seimon looks over at Tim. He is clutching the steering wheel as though his life depends on his grip. They can barely see the road ahead.
“You might want to slow down a little bit,” Seimon urges. But Tim doesn’t let up, even as he struggles to maintain control of the vehicle.
“No.” His voice betrays the shadow of an emotion that doesn’t often cross Tim’s confident exterior.
The wind intensifies, buffeting the minivan over the lanes, driving into them broadside like a lowered shoulder. The right side of the vehicle is beginning to lift perceptibly.
Tim believes the tornado is about to overtake them.
“We’re gonna die,” he says, gripped by a pure animal fear.
He sounds like a man who has just discovered his own terrible mistake. They have pushed too far, tempted fate. All that’s left now is to learn the cost of violating chasing’s one rule.
Seimon tries to reassure him: What he’s experiencing isn’t the tornado itself. It’s likely the outer circulation—too close, but still escapable.
The minivan tunnels blindly through walls of violent gale-driven rain. The bright-yellow highway dividing lines fade beneath gray currents. “Oh, my God,” Tim mutters. He shoves the accelerator to the floor.
“Slow down, Tim,” Seimon urges. “Slow down. Slow down. Winds at one hundred miles per hour.”
To the right, a power pole cants into their lane. More fall. Others bow like pliant saplings, looking as though they might topple into the road at any moment. “Power lines down. Left side,” Seimon directs. “You don’t want the power poles to come down on you.”
Tim swings into the oncoming lane to avoid them.
“Beautiful,” Seimon cries. “Winds easily over one hundred miles per hour now. The power poles are bending! I’ve never seen that in my life! They’re bending. More power lines down. Slow down. Slow down.”
The headlights of cars shine in the gloom ahead, behind a series of looming poles and their arcing transformers. Tumbleweeds skitter before them. Then, as quickly as the rain curtains had enveloped them, the sky clears. The light pales again. Rain falls gently.
Tim and Seimon regard each other with wide eyes and manic, adrenal grins.
“You did it,” Seimon says. “Well done, my friend. Well done.”
“That was fucking close,” Tim sputters.
“That was beautiful,” Seimon says, as Tim finally begins to throttle down, to relax his grip on the wheel. “That was perfect.”
* * *
As soon as the storm passes, they navigate back down the highway, now strung with electrical lines, past fields littered with power poles. Tim gets out and strides over to his turtle. He fixes the conical point between his knees and pries open the lid covering the data recorder’s switch. The red light strobes. He looks to either side, at the nubs where telephone poles have been snapped a foot or two off the ground. “We’ve got telephone poles down to our north, and lots of telephone poles down to our south,” he observes.
His heart must still be hammering in his chest, though he sounds calmer now. They crossed a line today, and he knows it. The tornado was weakening when it reached them, but at any moment that could have changed. The 100-mile-per-hour current they struggled through might have intensified into a 150-mile-per-hour gust strong enough to batter the minivan into the ditch and an end-over-end roll.
Yet as Tim balances the turtle between his thighs and deactivates the data recorder, all seems forgotten. The fact of their escape eclipses the terror of the moment. They made it out alive, with one hell of a story to tell. On to the work at hand.
Whether the tornado core passed over the turtle will become a point of debate. Based on video provided by other chasers, Tim maintains that it did. Others, most notably Joshua Wurman, the founder of the Center for Severe Weather Research, say that HITPR caught an oblique slice of a dissipating-though-dangerous tornado. Nonetheless, Wurman, one of the most prominent atmospheric scientists in the field, wants to include Tim’s data in his mobile-radar analysis of the same storm. For the first time, the turtle is yielding information that’s useful to other researchers.
In the paper that Tim coauthors with Wurman, he describes a forty-five-millibar barometric-pressure drop, indicating the passage of intense winds—as well as a series of peaks and valleys in the pressure trace, consistent with the movement of several suction vortices. The measurements are encouraging but by no means groundbreaking. Bill Winn, a VORTEX researcher and physicist at New Mexico’s Langmuir Laboratory, had gotten a probe within less than half a mile of a violent F4’s center in Texas eight years before.
Nevertheless, Tim is getting closer. Twice now, here and in Pratt, Kansas, he has succeeded in getting his turtles in front of tornadoes. They just haven’t been hit head-on. Yet.
That’s precisely what starts to worry Seimon.
After the close call in Stratford, he decides that he will not venture back into the path with Tim. Reluctantly, he withdraws from the mission. He has grown rather fond of Tim over the years, and he’s still inspired by the dream of a historic intercept—but Seimon can’t justify the risk of entering “no-man’s-land” again. After several years of working near tornadoes, they have no horror story to tell. They’re getting good at this, and they came out of Stratford without so much as a scratch. But it quite easily might have ended differently. The tornado ran over that turtle a mere eighty seconds after it was deployed.
It’s simple statistics, Seimon believes. Whether their chances of getting hit on a given deployment attempt are twelve percent or even just two, if they play the odds long enough, eventually they will lose. “You can only roll the dice so many times,” Seimon says, “before things go wrong.”
He turns to other plans instead. He’ll go back once more to the unexplored glaciers of the Cordilleras. He’ll finalize the research for his long-neglected thesis. He has met a woman named Tracie, whom he plans to marry. He doesn’t intend to die before the wedding.
Tim doesn’t tell Kathy about how close he gets in Stratford, or how close he needs to be to pull this quest off. He may have stumbled too close, he’ll admit to himself; but he still thinks he can find the right balance. Each storm is teaching him something. They might not be yielding the right data quite yet, but they’re still showing Tim their tricks. A chaser—like a lion tamer—learns only in dangerous proximity. He’d never be able to voice the lessons, but he’s developing an animal sense of how the twister moves, how it evolves, when he must flee, and when he can pounce.
CHAPTER TEN
* * *
MANCHESTER, SOUTH DAKOTA
IN EARLY 2003, Dr. William Gallus of Iowa State finds himself facing an intractable problem: he needs something that doesn’t exist. In 2001, the professor had broken ground on a new tornado simulator. The machine was to be one of a kind, powered by an
eight-foot fan mounted inside a cylinder the size of a subway tunnel. The entire apparatus would be suspended from a five-ton crane inside the university’s Wind Simulation and Testing Laboratory. Not only was it designed to generate wind speeds of up to sixty miles per hour, its vortex would eventually be capable of lateral movement.
An academic with a smooth, boyish face, Gallus is tantalized by the structural-engineering insights the simulator might yield as it translates over model buildings. He envisions revelations that will lead to a fuller grasp of how tornadic winds interact with structures, and how that might ultimately help us to build houses that are more tornado resistant.
The construction project itself, made possible by a National Science Foundation grant, is now complete. But before he can learn anything from it, he has to be sure that the simulation resembles the real thing.
The finest data set he can locate belongs to Joshua Wurman, drawing from his work with mobile Doppler. Wurman succeeded in scanning the entire life cycle of a tornado near Spencer, South Dakota, in 1998, and his data amounts to a high-resolution X-ray of its internal structure and evolution. Only a few years ago, nothing of the sort would have been available to Gallus; Wurman didn’t build his Doppler on Wheels (DOW) until 1995. Now, Gallus is able to compare the Spencer storm to the wind-speed distribution in his simulator, and the results are favorable.
But there is, for the professor’s purposes, one notable limitation to the DOW. Radar operates on line of sight. With distance, the beam becomes obstructed by everything from buildings to the spherical curvature of the planet. As a result, it can only collect data at tens or even hundreds of meters above the ground. Gallus still lacks any way to validate the wind profile at the simulator’s lowest levels—where people live, where houses stand, where he plans to place his model buildings. He’s come up against the same problem that has stymied researchers for decades.
The Man Who Caught the Storm Page 9