Then he’s sprinting, kicking up mud in his wake. He flings himself back into the minivan and floors it. They swing left onto the paved road, and through the windows they hear the white noise. Only now it sounds like the thundering of Niagara Falls. As they pass the farmstead, they can barely see the house through the rows of lush trees and the minivan’s mud-spattered windows.
“My God, Tim.” Porter exhales. “I hope you got it. Did you get it turned on?”
“Yeah.” The tornado still bears down.
“It is right on Carsten’s butt,” Porter says.
Something, maybe insulation, falls into the road ahead. Behind them, they see only the headlights of the Rhodens’ vehicle shining against darkness. Porter watches closely through the rear window. “It just went through that house,” he says.
After gaining some distance, Tim begins braking. The tornado is less than a mile behind them, but they’ve earned some breathing room. “Okay. I want to stop and look at it.” Tim steps out onto the wet asphalt and stares up at the thing he has just outrun, now a long, sinuous trunk boring into the prairie. It leaves the farmstead and crosses the road near the probe, ejecting the trappings of a life into a field of young corn. There is something about the way the ephemeral vortices within the circulation lash over the ground, like ripples on water. They can see soil moving radially to the center and propelling skyward at speeds that seem to violate natural law.
“Listen to it,” Porter shouts, awestruck.
Tim plants a new probe he has outfitted with cameras. His white socks are pulled high over mud-slathered calves, and his dark hair is wet and matted against his forehead. The tornado swings to the east, into the corn, and seems to hover in place. Meanwhile, Peter, the NatGeo photographer, deploys his own photographic probe, called Tin Man.
Suddenly the tornado curves northwest, toward the caravan. Tim, Porter, Peter, and the Rhodens pile into their vehicles, laughing and hooting, and begin to flee. They speed north for less than a mile before slowing up again. Gradually the vortex constricts, transitioning into what Tim describes as a laminar tube, narrow and translucent, like spider silk lit up by the setting sun. Another metamorphosis, and the tube is replaced by a thin, tattered strand that hangs and twists in the air like frayed cable. Slowly, it all dissolves into blue sky, leaving an amputated skirt of dirt and rain on the ground to whip and gust what remains of the low-level rotation. That, too, then begins to fade. The most incredible tornado Tim has ever witnessed—the true giant for which he has searched more than a decade—has finally breathed its last.
“That probe you put down, before the camera?” Porter says. “That took a direct hit.”
Pink insulation flutters down onto the cornfields. “Good.” Tim stows another probe into its plywood drawer. “I hope it’s on the ground.”
They retrace their steps, scanning the road and ditches ahead for Tim’s turtles when they come to a freshly destroyed farmstead. Tim parks nearby and begins to pick his way through the wreckage. Debarked trees, blasted with topsoil, are piled atop one another like kindling. He passes a barren concrete slab. A mud-coated basset hound shakes itself off in the road. There is no sign of its owners. A few other chasers and locals have arrived. One of them calls to the animal: “Come here, doggie. We need to put you on a leash.”
The dog rolls over onto its back, tail thumping between its legs.
“Yes, you’re a good dog.”
The Kingsbury County sheriff addresses Tim’s group. “Are you people the storm chasers?”
“Yeah,” Tim says. The air is heavy with the scent of propane.
“I don’t want people all over out here.”
“I completely understand. Is everybody all right here?”
“We’ve got a propane tank that’s leaking.”
Far off on the horizon, Porter sees the slender profile of another tornado. “It’s hosin’ again.”
The sheriff, Charlie Smith, squints into the distance and his eyes widen. “Oh, Christ! That’s over by my house.”
“Was anybody home?” Porter asks, turning to the farmstead.
“I don’t know,” Smith says. “I don’t know. I can’t . . . I hope Harold got out.”
The sheriff goes shuffling off, looking lost, his utility belt clinking in the ruin of a home belonging to a man he can’t find. He stands at the edge of the exposed cellar and peers down at the wooden beams, planks, and cinder blocks that have collapsed into it. “Harold?” the sheriff calls.
Tim steps warily onto the rubble and cranes his neck to look into its darkened interstices, confronted with his tornado’s work. No signs of life; no signs of death either. He seems to lose himself as he stares into the shadows of the cellar. Then he remembers his own role. He turns away and begins stalking toward the minivan. “I gotta go south and get my probe.”
He passes a flattened farm truck, the cab shorn flush with the dash panel. Tree-root boluses the size of tractor tires are upturned and naked. He looks back toward the house and sees the funnel a few miles out, deep blue and lancing diagonally at the fields. He hears birdsong, and the mournful bawling of mortally wounded cattle. Tim and Porter step through a mosaic of lumber, all arrayed in the same direction, the wind field’s fingerprint left on the earth. “This looks like F4, F5 damage to me,” Tim says.
They climb into the minivan and drive away, in search of the turtle that Porter saw get hit. For all Tim knows, it has been carried off or smashed by debris.
Porter’s wife—Kathy’s sister—picks this moment to check in. “Hey, guys, is this a good time?” she asks cheerily over the vehicle’s speakers.
“No!” the two shout in unison, and hurriedly end the call, with a promise to phone later.
As they scan the road ahead for signs of the bright cone, they
