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 such 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
