A: TWISTEX is the acronym designation for a severe weather research project formally recognized as the Tactical Weather Instrumented Sampling in/near Tornados EXperiment, a brainchild of Colorado engineer and storm chasing enthusiast Tim Samaras which began in the mid-2000's. Composed of a team of meteorologists, photographers and an armada of vehicles, it is commonplace for TWISTEX to log hundreds of miles a week across the Midwestern United States during the spring in search of perilous weather.
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| Members of TWISTEX pose for a group photo. |
The goal of this project is to document information regarding the formation of tornadoes, using various and unconventional devices to gain a previously unknown perspective on ground-level activity within their funnels. In turn, data collected contributes to superior warning durations before the onset of a tornado threat, sparing lives. Tim Samaras is single-handedly responsible for many of the great strides achieved in understanding tornadoes over the last decade, and his passion has directly influenced a climbing number of avoided fatalities in the midst of better warnings.
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| Innovator: Tim Samaras springs away from a probe deployment in 2003. Samaras married his technical background from a career with Boeing with his love of Mother Nature, building a myriad of inventions which would cull groundbreaking data from tornadoes. |
Q: WHY PAY TRIBUTE TO TWISTEX?
A: On May 31st, 2013, a violent and unprecedented tornado made landfall near El Reno, Oklahoma. This tornado would go on to achieve a maximum width of 2.6 miles, the widest on record. Arriving fresh on the heels of the catastrophic Moore, OK event, the El Reno storm would injure 151 people and claim eight, among whom were Tim Samaras, 55; his son, Paul, 24; and longtime associate Carl Young, 45. The trio perished amid a botched probe deployment when their car was swallowed up by the erratic, rogue tornado. They became the first storm chasers to be killed in the line of atmospheric research, which has been conducting on-the-road experimentation since the 1970's. Their deaths have ignited a controversy regarding the necessity of close-quarters tornado studies like TWISTEX.
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| The maverick El Reno twister. Visibility became nonexistent at close range. |
To follow this answer through to conclusion, I have to address some past history which exists between myself and Tim Samaras. As a lover of tornadoes since I was five, I was transfixed when April 2004's issue of National Geographic arrived in the Wiseman mailbox, and I would first encounter Tim Samaras ten seconds later in a glorious centerfold captioned, and I recite from my memory, "The hard science, dumb luck and cowboy nerve of CHASING TORNADOES."
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| I have a problem. |
This was pornography to my eyes, and I ravenously committed each photograph and every detail of the featured storm chase to my memory. Tim Samaras surely reaped the rewards of his hard work and dedication on that chase when he recorded unprecedented measurements which landed him in the Guinness Book of World Records, and a series of grants from the national Geographic Society. These grants would finance his research for the next several years and ensure that he had every big toy he needed. Tim's success came with a price, however; for all of his experience, he had cheated death to obtain his valuable data. One image in particular epitomes the harrowing peril. An impossibly tall, charcoal funnel rounds a grove of trees not one-thousand yards behind the headlights of Tim's van as it blazes down a country road - Tim later admitted that he escaped this probe drop only 80 seconds ahead of the F5 tornado.
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| Close shave: Samaras and his team faced unexpected odds at Manchester but made it out with both their lives and boggling measurements from inside the funnel, recorded by a direct-hit on one of Tim's probes. |
A picture of the Manchester, South Dakota intercept loomed across the magazine's front cover like the perfect visualization of all my Twister-infused childhood dreams made incarnate. Shortly afterward, a corresponding special aired on television called Inside the Tornado, which chronicled Tim's hair-raising Manchester encounter. Inside the Tornado was so-named for photographs which had fired off from within National Geographic's own probe on that chase, which snapped close-proximity stills of the advancing cyclone. However, it would be Tim who would go on to achieve the closest thing to an interior shot of a tornado in later years when a funnel passed over the top of his own camera probe and rewarded researchers and fans alike with stunning ground-level video.
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| Respected photographer Carsten Peter, who was behind the lens for the Manchester tornado, believes he probably would have died alongside Tim in El Reno had he not been busy writing a book. He's shown here holding a camera probe which was created by Nat Geo, and which captured the closest ever images of a tornado. |
Indeed, Tim was just as much of an entrepreneur as he was diligent investing his National Geographic funding, creating his own devices to exceed the shortcomings of existing technology. He favored a heavily-customized truck, bristling with antennae and a miniature radar dome, as his mobile base of operations. All manner of his instrumentation was hauled across the Great Plains every chase season, some of which weighed over ninety pounds and presented a physical deployment challenge when each second counted. Nonetheless, Samaras and his TWISTEX team remained unwavering in the face of their human limitations, routinely surpassing the expectations of the skeptical with a bevy of new insight. All the while, Tim Samaras' personal repertoire was growing, and his intuition was unmatched. Despite his close call in Manchester, he was esteemed as one of the safest and most cautious of professional tornado chasers and a role model to up-and-comers like Sean Casey, of Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers and TIV (Tornado Intercept Vehicle) fame.
Tim caught me off guard when he responded to my email. I was still in high school, and I needed an interview for my comp paper. You can imagine what my topic was. This made it difficult to wrangle even a few words from anyone in the field, but Tim was quite generous and he accommodated all of my questions, even calling me by the nickname all my friends used because he'd seen it on MySpace. I was feeling bulletproof on grading day after flaunting my dignified citation, so it struck me as a real surprise to have received a C- and a lecture on plagiarism from my teacher. Didn't the hack realize from reading my paper how big of a hard-on I've had for storm chasing since I'd seen pre-Final Destination Devon Sawa in that cable TV classic, Night of the Twisters? Of course I wrote that paper well. But I digress.
In addition to hearing back from Tim, I got a message and a friend request from _pancakes. I found out that my hunch was correct, and not only was he related to Tim, but he was Tim's son, and he wasn't a hell of a lot older than I was. The year 2008 marked the beginning of my cherished friendship with the eccentric, talented and humorous Paulie Samaras. From that time onward, Paul and I developed an internet-based friendship, a correspondence which weathered the switch to facebook and enjoyed many years of spirited conversation, joking, and, of course, tornado debates about the merits of VHS versus HD footage, his favorite chases, and his father's innovations.
Paulie was an admittedly odd but gracious and entertaining friend, and I always looked forward to the day when I would finally be able to visit Colorado and meet he and his dad in person. Both had become personal heroes to me, and it was a connection that I held close. It is with much regret that I realize now, looking back, that he and I were not talking as frequently in 2013. I had been planning to contact him just prior to May 31st, on which I had lost my chance to speak to him ever again.
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| Paul's inheritance and a deep-seated love of photography made him the only logical videographer to accompany TWISTEX. |
I still can't believe that in an instant, Paulie is gone now. Equally hard to swallow is the death of Tim Samaras, who has inspired me since my first exposure to his work came in 2004. I've grown up fascinated with tornadoes, but it wasn't until Tim came along that I could attach my love of storms to an individual and live vicariously through his endeavors. Mostly of all, though, I just miss my buddy. Near the end of his life, Paul had sent me a copy of their latest compilation DVD, autographed by his father. I had assured Paul that I would like it best if he also signed the DVD, but he didn't think his contributions were great enough.
"Autographed by both rockstars," I'd teased.
"Ha-ha, only one rockstar."
I truly wish now that he would have come around. Paul was a wonderful photographer, and it was his skill behind the lens which brought their experiences to life.
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| Carl Young enjoys a silly moment between tornadoes. |
Our friendship, though brief and limited, will always be a reason for me to smile. He afforded me that rare opportunity to come full-circle with my childhood dreams, and for that I will always be appreciative. These were not just thrill seekers chucking ignorant garbage into tornadoes at the risk of their lives as YouTube comments would like you to believe. Tim, Paul and Carl passed on doing what they loved in the name of saving people they never knew, and as an individual who has devoted a great deal of soul-searching to the meaning of life myself, I can attest to the fact that there is no better way to die than to die at the height of your standing in this world, and in the blink of an eye. Your legacy will continue on.
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| Carl and Paul demonstrate the close-knit disposition of the entire storm chasing community, which defies Hollywood caricature and is actually an emotionally grounded and warm-hearted family. |
Q: SO WHAT'S THE TRIBUTE?
A:
