At a subsequent American Meteorological Society conference, TWISTEX arrives like the plucky upstart on a bigger gang’s turf. Bill Gallus, the team’s academic partner, remains a little uneasy with the perception that they’ve gone rogue. The rivalry—one-sided though it may be—might as well have been lifted from the script of Twister. As Gallus says, they’re “the little guys with really good ideas, who have the most experience with ground-based deployment.” And, so far, “they get run over by the well-funded VORTEX2 planning people.” But that’s just the setup—who knows whether Wurman’s armada or Tim’s raw drive will triumph in the final act.
VORTEX2 is about to unleash millions of dollars’ worth of gadgetry on plains storms. The fight might seem unfair, unwinnable on the surface—not even worthy of being called a fight. But if there’s one thing Tim excels at, it’s finding tornadoes. This is where the underdog thinks he can again defy the impossible odds. Because even without DOW to watch over him—even without the unprecedented array of tools at VORTEX2’s disposal—all the equipment in the world means nothing if the scientists wielding them can’t catch the right storm. That’s largely the arc of storm science’s history: researchers trying and repeatedly failing to locate the sky’s most unpredictable phenomenon. If the members of TWISTEX have any small edge, it’s that they all have reputations as road warriors and highly experienced chasers.
Atmospheric field research is a wide-open frontier, theirs for the claiming. There are only a few mesonet data sets from within close proximity to violent tornadoes in existence. Coincident mesonet and in situ probe data sets are even rarer still. TWISTEX has the opportunity to leverage its chasing skill and agility to drive tornado science into its next golden era.
Tim is betting that the natural law of inertia will prevail at some crucial moment in the 2009 and 2010 seasons of Wurman’s experiment. Chasing is about being able to turn on a dime. But when a heavy object like VORTEX2 is in motion, it tends to stay in motion. When at rest, the armada will tend to stay at rest.
That’s when TWISTEX will step up. The game is on.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
QUINTER, KANSAS
ON MAY 23, 2008, not long after the annual kickoff of TWISTEX operations, the team is tracking a storm bearing down on a small Kansas town called Quinter. After a pair of unusually docile seasons, the project is off to a roaring start this year. Today is gearing up to be the team’s first shot at a monster tornado. It will serve as an initial test of TWISTEX’s cohesion and coordination under stressful, highly dangerous conditions. In equal measure, it’s a test of the gamble Tim made by passing up a berth with VORTEX2.
From the lead car, known as M1, Bruce Lee and Cathy Finley choreograph the movements of the three mesonets. The convoy proceeds evenly spaced and in single file down straight farm-to-market roads, their roof-mounted mesonet stations cruising above the corn like shark fins.
If they’re lucky, the stations will sample a cross section of the environment feeding the tornado. And if the weather gods truly smile upon TWISTEX today, a rear-flank downdraft surge will sweep across the cars, its characteristics captured by the dataloggers. Ideally, the tornado at the edge of the surge would pass over one or several of Tim’s turtles and media probes. But first they’ll have to contend with the radios that keep the team in fitful contact, limited Internet connectivity, roads that end abruptly, and storms that seem to resent the prodding of meteorological inquiry.
To Lee’s and Finley’s mild irritation, the list of obstacles also currently includes Tim and Carl, who have wandered off, gotten separated from the group, and are now irretrievably out of position. If the mesonets do manage to collect a data set this afternoon, they’re unlikely to be bolstered by any probes. It isn’t that they expect Tim to remain within eyesight; his black GMC is autonomous by design, able to venture far closer than the Chevy Cobalt and its four cylinders dare. Yet to Lee and Finley, their data set will be of little value if probe and mesonet don’t deploy on the same tornado. At their best, each informs the data collected by the other. The full team’s data is more valuable than any piece in isolation.
But M1 can’t worry about that now.
The mesonets tack north along a sodden dirt road, tires leaving two-track depressions that quickly fill with standing water. To the northwest, a mesocyclone scrapes its belly across the prairie. As they approach a stand of trees, a thin, pearlescent vortex to the northeast terminates in a swirling wreath of dust. It crosses the road ahead, and a fuse or transformer farther down the line explodes in a cold, blue burst of light. When they near the source of the flash, the poles lean ominously overhead.
Within minutes the thin rope of a tornado swells into a textbook stovepipe, which they easily track over the flat cropland. M1 continues along at a leisurely pace, roughly twenty miles per hour, the optimal speed for gathering data. Apart from the fact that M3 had gotten turned around in Quinter and is lagging behind, M1 and M2 are in ideal formation. All that remains to be done is to keep good spacing and observe.
The storm, however, is only just baring its teeth. After M1 passes an electrical substation, Lee and Finley are blasted by a 108-mile-per-hour gust. It slams broadside into the sedan in what feels like an intense rear-flank downdraft. Suddenly the
