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
