MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
SimonandSchuster.com
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Brantley-Hargrove
@simonbooks
We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
* * *
Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.
NOTES
PROLOGUE
The fire department’s siren sounded: Phan T. Long and Emil Simiu, “The Fujita Intensity Scale: A Critique Based on Observations of the Jarrell Tornado of May 27, 1997,” National Institute of Standards and Technology, July 1998, 4.
a shrill, oscillating note: Interview with a longtime member of the Jarrell Volunteer Fire Department.
The siren was only ever used to call up volunteers: “Tornado Disaster—Texas, May 1997,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, November 14, 1997.
For a time it seemed to track neither north nor south: Scott Guest chaser video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfCXofp7Pgw.
The tornado was as wide as thirteen football fields: Brian E. Peters, “Aerial Damage Survey of the Central Texas Tornadoes of May 27, 1997,” C-2, https://www.weather.gov/media/publications/assessments/jarrell.pdf.
School had let out for summer: Allen R. Myerson, “Town Is Upended by Tornadoes Twice in Eight Years,” New York Times, May 29, 1997, http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/29/us/town-is-upended-by-tornadoes-twice-in-eight-years.html.
Double Creek Estates: Long and Simiu, “Fujita Intensity Scale,” 12.
With no choice but to shelter aboveground: “Tornado Disaster,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
All else was fatality: James H. Henderson, “Service Assessment: The Central Texas Tornadoes of May, 27, 1997,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, April 1998, 3.
The Hernandez family was the outlier: Jesse Katz, “A Neighborhood Blown to Nothingness,” Los Angeles Times, May 29, 1997, http://articles.latimes.com/1997-05-29/news/mn-63711_1_entire-neighborhood.
Their home and some thirty others: “Tornado Disaster,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
the foundations had been scraped clean: Long and Simiu, “Fujita Intensity Scale,” 11–15.
The carcasses of hundreds of cattle: “The Jarrell/Cedar Park and Pedernales Valley Tornadoes, Summary of Weather Event of May 27, 1997,” National Weather Service.
More than five hundred feet of asphalt had been peeled: Peters, “Aerial Damage Survey,” C-3.
I learned later that the tornado had crawled: Long and Simiu. “Fujita Intensity Scale,” 6.
On average, tornadoes will claim eighty lives annually: “Tornadoes: A Rising Risk?,” Lloyd’s of London, February 2013, 19, 21.
the damage caused by tornadoes has outstripped that from: Rawle O. King, “Financing Natural Catastrophe Exposure: Issues and Options for Improving Risk Transfer Markets,” Congressional Research Service, August 2013, 8.
seventy percent of tornado fatalities are attributable to the deadliest breed: “Thunderstorms, Tornadoes, Lightning: Nature’s Most Violent Storms,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 4, .
An EF5 flattened a swath of Joplin, Missouri: “Joplin, Missouri, Tornado—May 22, 2011,” NWS Central Region Service Assessment, National Weather Service, July 2011, 1.
In Joplin, damage surveyors found a truck: Timothy P. Marshall, “Damage Survey of the Joplin Tornado: 22 May 2011” (conference paper, 26th Annual Conference on Severe Local Storms, American Meteorological Society, 2012), 15–16.
A Ford Explorer was lofted: Eugene W. McCaul et al., “Extreme Damage Incidents in the 27 April 2011 Tornado Superoutbreak” (conference paper, 26th Annual Conference on Severe Local Storms, American Meteorological Society, 2012), 2, 10.
It passed clean through the first: Interviews with Larry Tanner, National Wind Institute, Texas Tech University.
Its frail glass container hadn’t even cracked: Staff Reports, “Tornadoes Spawn Strange Tales, Some of Them True,” Chattanooga Times Free Press, April 26, 2012.
In Joplin, a child’s play set: Marshall, “Damage Survey,” 16.
false-alarm rate of roughly 70 percent: J. Brotzge and S. Erickson. “A 5-Yr Climatology of Tornado False Alarms,” Weather and Forecasting, August 2011.
The people of Joplin had seventeen minutes: “Joplin, Missouri, Tornado,” NWS Central Region Service Assessment, 23.
Xenia, Ohio, received no warning at all: J. Brotzge and S. Erickson, “Tornadoes without NWS Warning,” Weather and Forecasting 25 (February 2010): 161.
it had knocked out power to four of Xenia’s five sirens: Staff, “In Xenia, Warning Bells Silenced,” CBS News, September 21, 2000.
In 2016, the Storm Prediction Center: Jeff Frame, “This Is How the ‘Surprise’ Indiana and Ohio Outbreak of August 24, 2016, Happened,” U.S. Tornadoes, August 2016, http://www.ustornadoes.com/2016/08/26/surprise-indiana-ohio-tornado-outbreak-august-24-2016-happened/.
The Arikara called it the Black Wind: Nani Suzette Pybus, “Whirlwind Woman: Native American Tornado Mythology and Global Parallels” (PhD diss., Oklahoma State University, December 2009), 39, 43, 234.
Researchers still dream of the day: Interviews with Joshua Wurman, founder of the Center for Severe Weather Research.
In Romania, where tornadoes are infrequent: Bogdan Antonescu and Aurora Bell, “Tornadoes in Romania,” Monthly Weather Review, March 2015, http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/MWR-D-14-00181.1.
CHAPTER ONE: THE WATCHER
Fog clings to the low swells: National Weather Service Daily Summary for Local Weather, July 21, 1993, http://maps.wunderground.com/history/airport/KAKO/1993/7/21/DailyHistory.html?req_city=Anton&req_state=CO&req_statename=&reqdb.zip=80801&reqdb.magic=1&reqdb.wmo=99999.
The rain is coming down hard now: Tim Samaras, Driven by Passion, DVD.
It’s isolated, rising above the cloud deck: William Reid, “July 21, 1993, Last Chance, Colorado, Tornado,” http://stormbruiser.com/chase/1993/07/21/july-21-1993-last-chance-colorado-tornado/.
He has never chased outside his home state: Andy Van De Voorde, “Swept Away: Storm Chasers Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows,” Denver Westword, August 26, 1992, 26.
CHAPTER TWO: A BOY WITH AN ENGINEER’S MIND
The bane of his mother’s household appliances: Interviews with Jim Samaras, brother of Tim Samaras.
Tim built his first transmitter: Tim Samaras, WJ0G, QRZ.com, https://www.qrz.com/db/WJ0G.
The house echoed with the roar: Interviews with Jim Samaras.
his first real glimpse: Stefan Bechtel. Tornado Hunter: Getting Inside the Most Violent Storms on Earth. (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2009), 47–49.
For spending cash: Interviews with Jim Samaras.
this imperturbable faith: Interviews with Larry Brown.
Among his earliest projects: “Minor Scale Event—Test Execution Report,” Defense Nuclear Agency, January 30, 1986, 1.
To track the blast’s cratering characteristics: Interviews with Robert Lynch.
The day of the test: Interviews with Larry Brown.
Then, on a winter day in 1980: Interviews with Kathy Samaras.
CHAPTER THREE: THIS LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE SKY
The urge returns the way it first began: Bechtel, “Tornado Hunter,” 9.
In 1990 he enrolls in a six-week: Interviews with Judi Richendifer.
He learns why Tornado Alley is such a powder keg: Conversations with Gabe Garfield.
In the years before smartphones: Interviews with Tim Tonge.
antennas swaying like reeds from the roof
of the Datsun: Interviews with Brad Carter.
Tim colonizes a used blue ’91 Dodge Caravan: Tim Samaras, “Dryline Chaser,” StormEyes.org, http://www.stormeyes.org/tornado/vehicles/timsam.htm.
Over at DRI, they call it kludging: Interviews with Bud Reed.
On storm days: Interviews with Pat Porter.
He remains a good husband: Interviews with Kathy Samaras.
“Some call it a hobby”: Van De Voorde, “Swept Away,” 26.
the Dryline Chaser is now recognizable: Samaras, Driven by Passion.
“I got some great stuff out in Kansas”: Interviews with Mike Nelson.
When the spring and early summer have passed: Interviews with Kathy Samaras.
To Amy’s profound embarrassment: Interviews with Amy (Samaras) Gregg and Jenny (Samaras) Scott.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE SPARK
Nobody saw it coming: Interviews with Frank Tatom.
The damage path was a half mile at its widest: “November 15, 1989, Tornado Details,” National Weather Service, https://www.weather.gov/hun/hunsur_1989-11-15_tornadodetails.
the energy equivalent of half a ton of TNT per second: Frank B. Tatom and Stanley Vitton, “The Transfer of Energy from a Tornado into the Ground,” Seismological Research Letters, January 2001, fig. 2.
Its components are quite simple: Frank B. Tatom, and Stanley Vitton, “Method and Apparatus for Seismic Tornado Detection,” US Patent and Trademark Office, January 1995.
Tim is more excited than he has ever been: Interviews with Pat Porter.
Just south of Rome, Kansas: Samaras, Driven by Passion.
He’s good at this: Interviews with Frank Tatom and Pat Porter.
What is stopping Tim: Interviews with Pat Porter.
The answer arrives in 1998: Interviews with Larry Brown.
CHAPTER FIVE: CATCHING THE TORNADO
a 1925 monster that left a three-state trail of destruction: Peter S. Felknor, “The Tri-State Tornado,” iUniverse, 2004.
official policy forbade even the utterance: Timothy A. Coleman and Kevin R. Knupp, “The History (and Future) of Tornado Warning Dissemination in the United States,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, May 2011, 569.
stampeding cattle: Marlene Bradford, “Historical Roots of Modern Tornado Forecasts and Warnings,” Weather and Forecasting, August 1999, 508.
It took two freak storms: Robert A. Maddox and Charlie A. Crisp, “The Tinker AFB Tornadoes of March 1948,” Weather and Forecasting, August 1999, http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/1520-0434(1999)014%3C0492%3ATTATOM%3E2.0.CO%3B2.
The first civilian tornado “bulletins”: Charles A. Doswell, Alan R. Moller, and Harold E. Brooks, “Storm Spotting and Public Awareness since the First Tornado Forecasts of 1948,” Weather and Forecasting, August 1999, http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/1520-0434(1999)014%3C0544%3ASSAPAS%3E2.0.CO%3B2.
The areas encompassed by any given watch were so vast: Stephen F. Corfidi, “The Birth and Early Years of the Storm Prediction Center,” Weather and Forecasting, August 1999, 515.
Twisters seemed to be utterly repelled: Howard B. Bluestein, Tornado Alley: Monster Storms of the Great Plains (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Launched in 1945, the Thunderstorm Project: Roscoe R. Braham, “The Thunderstorm Project, 18th Conference on Severe Local Storms Luncheon Speech,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, August 1996, https://docs.lib.noaa.gov/noaa_documents/NOAA_related_docs/history/thunderstorms/thunderstorm.html.
Each storm, Byers discovered, results from a confluence: Interviews with Gabe Garfield.
Keith Browning: K. A. Browning and G. B. Foote, “Airflow and Hail Growth in Supercell Storms and Some Implications for Hail Suppression,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, July 1976, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.49710243303/abstract.
an updraft on steroids: Keith A. Browning, “Airflow and Precipitation Trajectories within Severe Local Storms,” Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, November 1964, http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0469(1964)021%3C0634%3AAAPTWS%3E2.0.CO%3B2.
In the turbulent springtime months: Interviews with Gabe Garfield.
The first Doppler scan of a tornado: Rodger Brown, ed., “The Union City, Oklahoma, Tornado of 24 May 1973,” NOAA Technical Memorandum ERL NSSL-80, December 1976, 3.
they assumed they had found an error in the data: Bluestein, Tornado Alley, 56.
tornado got too close: A. J. Bedard and C. Ramzy, “Surface Meteorological Observations in Severe Thunderstorms. Part I: Design Details of TOTO,” Journal of Climate and Applied Meteorology, May 1983, 911.
So while attending an after-hours party: Interviews with Al Bedard and Howie Bluestein.
Unless anchored or widened: Howard B. Bluestein, “A History of Severe-Storm-Intercept Field Programs,” Weather and Forecasting, August 1999, http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/1520-0434%281999%29014%3C0558%3AAHOSSI%3E2.0.CO%3B2.
The instrument promptly pitched over onto its side: TOTO, http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/toto.htm.
“It would be fascinating to actually get inside”: A Day in the Life of a Storm Chaser, PBS, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/imax/life.html.
But this, too . . . failed to pierce the core: Interview with William P. Winn, Langmuir Laboratory.
CHAPTER SIX: THE COWBOY SCIENCE
So the answer he finally strikes upon: Roy Heyman, “Air Blast Response of Low Drag Shape Launcher Vehicles,” Small Business Innovation Research, Small Business Administration, 1991.
quarter-inch-thick mild steel: Timothy M. Samaras and Julian J. Lee, “Pressure Measurements within a Large Tornado” (conference paper, Eighth Symposium on Integrated Observing and Assimilation Systems for Atmosphere, Oceans and Land Surface, 2004).
The project is an exceedingly unusual one: Interviews with Larry Brown.
The real selling point: Rod Franklin, “Tornado Chasers: Engineer’s Device Will Help Measure Their Fury,” Boston Business Journal, http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/mass-high-tech/2002/04/tornado-chasers-engineers-device-will-help.html.
If they have learned anything from TOTO: Interviews with Al Bedard.
Tim’s dream is made flesh: “A Hardened In Situ Tornado Pressure Recorder,” 1999, https://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/93740.
the turtle gets its first: Interviews with Julian Lee.
a fleet of the probes: “A Hardened In Situ Tornado Pressure Recorder,” 2000, https://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/93742.
CHAPTER SEVEN: A TURTLE IN THE WILD
a credible plan to penetrate the tornado core: Interviews with Anton Seimon.
The mission’s title underscores the danger: National Geographic Society Expeditions Council Grant Application Form: “Inside Tornadoes: A Research Initiative.”
coordination issues dog the squadron: Interviews with Anton Seimon.
the classic plains setup: Anton Seimon’s personal chase log.
he finds the arrangement chafing: Interviews with Anton Seimon.
Eleven days into the mission: Ibid.
It uprooted hardwoods: Al Pietrycha, StormEyes.com chase summary, 2001, http://stormeyes.org/pietrycha/vortex/010618/chasesummary.txt.
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE TOREADOR
The pair now imagine a stripped-down mission: Interviews with Anton Seimon.
Tim believes he should be the one to make the call: Email correspondence between Tim Samaras and Anton Seimon.
a manifesto of sorts: Mission outline written by Tim Samaras.
Tim is chasing harder now: Interviews with Pat Porter.
Until Lee began chasing: Interviews with Julian Lee.
Tim misses an outbreak: “Service Assessment: La Plata, Maryland, Tornado Outbreak,” National Weather Service, September 2002, http://www.weather.gov/media/publications/assessments/laplata.pdf.
closer than he’s ever been: Julian Lee and Tim Samaras, “Pressure Measurements within a Large Tornado” (American Meteorologic
al Society conference paper).
But the storm will not wait: “Service Assessment: Veterans Day Weekend Tornado Outbreak of November 9–11, 2002,” National Weather Service, March 2003, http://www.weather.gov/media/publications/assessments/veteran.pdf.
CHAPTER NINE: STRATFORD, TEXAS
The road trip to the target: Interviews with Anton Seimon.
Clouds as dull as slag: Chase video provided by Anton Seimon.
In the paper that Tim coauthors with Wurman: Joshua Wurman and Timothy Samaras, “Comparison of In Situ Pressure and DOW Doppler Winds in a Tornado and RHI Vertical Slices through 4 Tornadoes during 1996–2004” (conference paper, 22nd Conference on Severe Local Storms, American Meteorological Society, 2004).
CHAPTER TEN: MANCHESTER, SOUTH DAKOTA
The machine was to be one of a kind: Interviews with William Gallus.
Months later, in a cheap motel room: Interviews with Pat Porter.
This year, he was able to get the National Geographic Society: Interviews with Rebecca Martin, National Geographic Society.
Peter has already begged his editor for two extensions: Interviews with Pat Porter.
Rhoden and the others had pressed for a play: Interviews with Gene Rhoden.
its funnel is gracefully tapered: Samaras, Driven by Passion.
The twister has kept to the fields: Ibid.
The clouds are painted: Ibid.
That night, in a Huron, South Dakota, motel: Footage provided by Gene Rhoden.
With a back-of-the-envelope calculation: Julian J. Lee, T. Samaras, and C. Young, “Pressure Measurements at the Ground in an F-4 Tornado” (conference paper, 22nd Conference on Severe Local Storms, 2004).
CHAPTER ELEVEN: DOUBLING DOWN
Next he’s on the CNN set: YouTube clip of CNN segment with Soledad O’Brien, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mKxPY6BiVc.
The Man Who Caught the Storm Page 27