But the real crowd-pleaser is the modified Beckman & Whitley Model 192. The Kahuna, as Tim refers to the instrument, is a nearly one-ton Cold War relic formerly used by the military to photograph nuclear explosions. It’s the videographic equivalent of a Gatling gun: eighty-two cameras spinning around a drum at up to 4,500 rotations per minute. The Kahuna can only run for thirty seconds or so before it overheats and tears itself apart. “When you approach eight hundred thousand, nine hundred thousand frames per second,” Tim says, “it screams like a girl.”
Getting the contraption into the back of the LIV requires nothing less than a forklift. Over the years, Tim has developed something of an emotional attachment to the Kahuna. At ARA, he retrofitted its film cameras to shoot digital images, an enormously complex undertaking. He now believes the hulking camera will reveal lightning behavior scientists haven’t even conceived of. “The objective there is to catch the attachment process, where the step leader touches the ground,” Tim says. “I want to see that formation process. I want to see the formation of the return stroke coming up off the ground.”
If there is anything that might be able to compete with Tim’s fascination with the vortex, it’s lightning.
He is already deeply engaged, obsessing over the LIV through the beginning of 2012. As the first severe weather of the year approaches, though, National Geographic comes through with an offer of just enough money to fund Tim’s tornado chasing for the season. It can only cover him, not TWISTEX; in exchange Tim will post “webisodes” of his best footage from the road. Tim can’t say no to an opportunity to chase.
Soon, he and Paul are on the trail of a powerful EF4, near Salina, Kansas, in mid-April. The wedge roars over the table-flat fields at a crawl, allowing them to approach within a couple hundred yards. But that one chase will have to hold Tim over until next year.
The ongoing drought is cutting the storms off from one of their main fuel sources: moisture. No other significant tornadoes touch down on the plains for the rest of the season. Even Josh Wurman, with all his funding, struggles to find any worthwhile storms. It may be just as well that TWISTEX is taking the year off.
Through the rest of 2012, Tim pours himself into the LIV. It should be ready in time for the 2013 season. He may wonder, as he works, whether he could ease over into a parallel pursuit from here on out: lightning over tornadoes. This could well be the next unexplored frontier. He and Lyons have two years’ worth of DARPA funding, and they’re already planning a series of lightning-related research projects. Could this be his next Manchester, even?
After nearly twenty-five years of chasing and too many close calls to count, Tim has an off-ramp if he wants to take it. He’s fifty-five years old and can devote his time to safer projects—he could embrace the landmark lightning study, lay off heavy tornado hunting, and spend a lot more time with his wife, kids, and grandkids. He has taken a step back; he can turn away entirely if he chooses to.
But the vision of a Kansan EF4, with Paul at his side, doesn’t fade so easily.
As much as Tim geeks out over the Kahuna and the LIV, it’s not the same. It’s not tornadoes. Even as Tim has assembled new projects to support himself, he’s still looking for a way to revive TWISTEX.
As the 2013 season approaches, he thinks he might have found it: National Geographic says it is prepared to underwrite Tim’s tornado research in a bigger way again. Unfortunately, when the grant is finally funded, he only gets about half of what he’d asked for. The money is enough to keep Tim, Carl, Paul, and maybe another friend in the field. But it won’t cover a full complement of TWISTEX mesonets. He writes to Lee and Finley to break the bad news: they’re on their own once again this season.
Tim has enough for a small mission, at least. And he’s intent on making the most of it. It will be like the old days—back when he chased with a minivan, a few turtles, and a companion to hold the camera.
Come early April, the familiar rush is back. Chasers are a helplessly optimistic bunch; the beginning of every storm season holds the crackle of promise. Any afternoon, Tim may witness something incredible, something that casts a shadow over the remainder of the year. In this way, some seasons become defined by a single storm. The tornado is committed to memory for its size, ferocity, or for the trail it leaves behind. Manchester is one of them. Jarrell, Texas, is another.
But every once in a while, one storm becomes the yardstick against which all the others are measured. These are the storms of a chaser’s dreams. This season holds just such an event. It will be unlike anything Tim has seen. It will be unlike anything anyone alive has ever seen. Through all the maddening busts, all the miraculous intercepts, all the close calls, Tim has spent years searching the plains for the ultimate storm. Now it’s here.
PART THREE
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHASE NIRVANA
FOR THE FIRST time since 2011, a small TWISTEX team assembles at the Samaras compound in Bennett, Colorado.
