They drive east into central Kansas and arrive in time to see a beautiful tornado near the town of Rozel. Storm chasers are nothing if not connoisseurs—they fawn over size, symmetry, clear contrast, and clean lines—and this tornado has it all. With the sun setting in the background, a sliver of its trailing edge shines cantaloupe orange; the remainder of its bulk reflects a bone-gray calcite. The structure is enough to leave the group in awe. From the cloud base, it descends as straight as a stovepipe, bulging near the center before narrowing gradually at first, then sharply near the surface. The tip finally vanishes behind a churning bowl of tilled sod.
Grubb sits on the truck’s window frame and films over the roof, his camera jouncing as they cruise through the farm country. Occasionally, the wind sock on Paul’s camera whipsaws into view. They pursue for half an hour, until the funnel lifts from the fields and retreats back into the clouds, like the tapering tail of a bull snake receding into tall grass. “There it goes,” Tim shouts over the idling diesel. The wind begins to ease, and they hear the silvery sound of birdsong. It has been the perfect tornado, the perfect chase: no cities, no towns, no deaths.
For the first time since 2008, the only cameras in the truck are their own. There are no producers telling Tim what to do or where to go. And there are no hot microphones attached to his shirt. He is free to say whatever he wants without fear that the words will come to haunt him later on prime-time cable television. It’s like the early years, before money and fame complicated everything. They trade jokes and barbs. This is the most fun they’ve had together in a long time. Even Paul seems more extroverted than usual, wisecracking with the other guys.
That night, the four check into a Comfort Suites in Pratt, Kansas, and find that they are sharing the motel with some old friends. Marc Austin, a forecaster at the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma, and his wife, Sharon, had also chased the tornado near Rozel. Tim goes to bed early, as is his custom, but Paul, Carl, and Grubb file into Marc and Sharon’s cramped room and drink beer late into the night. The day had been the kind chasers live for, and everyone is in high spirits. The usual indicators had been equivocal—the forecast didn’t scream long-lived, significant twister—yet they’d all pulled it off, plucking a diamond from the rough. “It’s just a tornado out in the field, and it’s beautiful,” Marc says. “It’s kind of chase nirvana, that day was.”
They pose for a photo of the five of them pointing dramatically at some imaginary off-frame threat, a goofy homage to Carl’s signature stance on Storm Chasers, when he’d stare resolutely into the middle distance and level an index finger at the oncoming tornado. “[Carl] had gone through a tough time because Storm Chasers was done. He looked down,” Sharon Austin says. But tonight, it seems the old Carl has resurfaced. She suspects chasing with Tim has lifted his spirits. The season is off to a raring start, and Carl is again on the road with friends.
There’s an intimate proximity to chasing across states with the same group, in the same vehicle, that one seldom experiences in day-to-day life. A sense of camaraderie inevitably emerges over the long chase, along with a singular miasma. As Tim describes it: “You spend three or four days in a vehicle, it develops a certain scent. After a three- to four-day trip, we’ve got a lot of knowledge of each other and what’s going on in our lives. Fortunately, our group gets along really well. That’s the secret—you need people who are compatible. And of course, showering regularly is a good thing, too.”
As good as it feels to have the gang back together, there are still moments early in the season that unearth an uneasy dissonance between Carl’s style and Tim’s. The Discovery Channel producers may have brought it to the fore, but Carl has always been the more aggressive chaser. A few days later, by May 20, they have gone south after a storm near Bray, Oklahoma, east of Lawton. Carl steers the probe truck along a narrow county road, hemmed in on either side with thick scrub brush and stunted trees. Tim glances down at an iPad, and his fingers move over the road map on the screen. He leans forward in his seat and peers up at the sky, eyes searching for signs of rapid cloud movement. A light rain taps against the windshield, punctuated by the heavier thwack of hailstones.
There is a tornado somewhere off to the left, behind the vegetation—that much he knows for certain. But they have lost sight of it. Worse, Tim suspects the vortex is beginning to rope. As a tornado becomes dislodged from the updraft, the powerful blowing cold of the forward-flank downdraft could send the dying twister careening into their path.
“We don’t want to get right beside it,” Tim advises Carl. “Let’s be careful because we’re in limited visibility.”
The trees and brush form a dense screen; they’re driving in the blind. But Carl doesn’t let off the gas.
“Careful! It’s right next to us,” Tim says, more forcefully this time. “Slow down a little bit. Let’s find out where it’s at.”
“It’s right here,” Grubb says, finally catching sight of the funnel.
“Yeah,” Tim says, a note of exasperation in his voice. “I know.”
The contrast against the dull pewter sky is poor, but they
