He once sends Nelson a video intended to dispel any illusions the audience might hold about the glamorous life of a chaser. He has the camera rolling inside his motel room in western Kansas, panning over its modest furnishings. Then he zooms in on a framed picture of the actor Michael Landon, best known as the father in Little House on the Prairie. The sticker on the frame reads MICHAEL LANDON SLEPT HERE. Tim’s hand can be seen gently nudging the frame aside to reveal a gaping hole in the drywall.
Such is life in pursuit of tornadoes. The miles are long, the food is often gastrointestinal dynamite, and the lodging is humble. Tim wouldn’t change anything.
When the spring and early summer have passed, and the sky quiets down, life regains familiar outlines in the Samaras household. Tim drops the kids off at school on his way to work. To Amy’s profound embarrassment, the family minivan bristles with all manner of satellite receivers and lengthy antennae, each wobbling as the garish vehicle comes to a stop in front of her gawking classmates. While Kathy helps lead Amy’s Girl Scout troop, Tim becomes the leader of Jenny’s troop. He’s believed to be the first male troop leader in the state. The little girls in his charge have mostly been raised by their mothers, and Tim’s style of den-mothering is new to them. They don’t knit or bake. Instead, they build model rockets.
Tim is also a popular attraction on Career Day, when Jenny proudly parades her father in front of her spellbound classmates, none of whom can claim a storm-chasing dad. He’s equally effective when it comes to homework, especially with any assignment that might involve engineering. Tim is often far more invested in Jenny’s science projects than she is, and the result—say, a tiny car powered by a mousetrap—always betrays a degree of technological sophistication she worries her teachers will find suspicious. Either that, she laughs, or they believe they’ve discovered a budding prodigy.
The childhoods of Amy, Jenny, and Paul fill up with uncommon sights. During one Fourth of July, Tim ignites a small chunk of solid propellant he’d scavenged from a Titan rocket. The kids watch from the safety of the living-room window as the fuel hisses and sends up a pale blue pillar of flame—a small taste of his work on the test range. As they get older, he also gives them glimpses of his all-consuming passion. They don’t see much when he takes Amy chasing. But when he brings Paul and Jenny with him on a brief jaunt near Aurora, they find a funnel cloud hovering like a white proboscis over the foothills.
“Paul,” Jenny’s breathless voice can be heard saying in Tim’s recording, “can you see it?”
Kathy has never chased with Tim and has no real desire to do so. What could possibly be so enjoyable about driving for days on end from dawn to dusk? She’ll never find out, and she’s fine with that. She has instead come to understand Tim’s chasing as another odd wrinkle of the one-of-a-kind man she loves—a mostly harmless preoccupation whose biggest cost is Tim’s absence once May and June arrive.
It is often said of Tim that to chase as frequently as he does, he must have an incredibly tolerant boss and, more important, a saintly wife. Chasing has been known to place an insupportable strain on even the sturdiest relationships. “I have had numerous girlfriends leave me because of storm chasing,” says Ben McMillan, a friend of Tim’s. “You’re a normal person eight months out of the year, but then spring comes and your life completely changes.” Infidelities have also been known to occur on the road, a testament to how the long weeks away can corrode.
But Tim and Kathy are a special pair. They both know how lucky they are to have found each other. When he’s gone, Tim does all he can never to make her worry. Before he settles in for the night in Kansas or wherever, he calls to let her know that he is safe, and to tell her about his day. And she tells him about hers, sending along updates from their two beautiful girls and son. The connection holds strong, whether they’re next to each other on the couch or separated by hundreds of miles of flatlands.
Kathy tries as best she can not to dwell on the inherent danger of her husband’s pastime. She considers it, or course, but always returns to the same conclusion: This is Tim, the deliberate, conscientious man she can depend on. “I believed in him, and I knew him, and I guess I just had complete faith that he would stay safe,” she says.
For now, there’s little to fear. Tim has no reason to place himself in danger. Chasing is about tape, film, and experience—it’s about testing himself against the inconceivable complexity of the atmosphere. But soon, he will need more—and he’ll be able to do more. As anyone who knows him would tell you, Tim has never been content merely to observe. Ever since he was a boy, his need to understand has been compulsive, consuming. Tim Samaras can’t help but take something apart just to figure out what makes it tick. And over the last few years, he has built up a skill set that could allow him not simply to acquaint himself with the field of tornado science, but to drive it forward.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE SPARK
AS A STORM assembles, as the clouds darken and swirl, scientists are often blind to what sets a serious thunderstorm apart from an extraordinary tornado. It could be as subtle as a shift in the direction of the wind, or a break in the clouds that lets the sun shine through. The direct causes are rarely recognized as they happen. The triggers of an EF5
