These days will tear open anyone’s world. They’ve often motivated Tim to push harder, to gather the kind of data that would have allowed even one more soul to survive. If the death sweeping past his window has such an effect today, he keeps it inside. No one in the truck is saying much now.
By the time they reach the end of the damage path, traffic begins to pick up again. They drive through the night and arrive in Bennett in the early-morning hours of May 23. Tim has a brief window—a few days at most—to ready himself for a different kind of chase. This isn’t like loading the probe truck with a mesonet rack, a TOWER, and bunch of turtles. He’ll be hauling into the field the most advanced mobile lightning observatory ever built. Not only must he double-check the camera systems and ready the box truck for a long haul, he’s got laundry to do and another suitcase to pack. Since the interlude will be short, Carl stays on in the guest bedroom.
He’s a good guest all around. Carl cooks like a gourmand and always insists on doing the dishes afterward. He is unfailingly kind to Paul and just as obsessed with movies. In the afternoons, they usually abscond into town and see the latest films, especially science fiction. This is one of the upsides of Tim’s chasing, and what Kathy enjoys most: getting to know kids from a school in the Iowa farm country, or a guy from Lake Tahoe whom she might otherwise never have met without the passion that connects him to her husband.
But on May 26, there’s no time to linger. The house is a flurry of activity. Tim is always a little stressed on the day of a mission. He wakes early and brews a pot of coffee. Periodically, he and Carl huddle over a laptop and discuss the weather models’ various predictions. They intend to head out today and reach central Kansas by nightfall. He and Carl haul camera equipment out to the LIV and fill coolers with drinks and snacks.
When all is ready, Tim pulls around to the front of the house with a Chevy Cobalt, which he plans to use as a secondary chase vehicle, just in case they decide to go after a tornado. In addition to the funding he’s receiving through PhOCAL, the National Geographic Society is underwriting his study of lightning and tornadoes inside plains “superstorms.” To that end, Tim stows three probes in the sedan’s trunk. Normally, he’d never attempt a deployment in one of the Cobalts, but with limited funding, Tim must save where he can—and the probe truck guzzles diesel.
At around noon, he kisses Kathy good-bye. He and Paul step into the LIV, and Carl mans the Cobalt. They pull down the long drive, and through the gate. The white van and the mesonet car turn north, heading toward the interstate. With the Bennett house’s broad vistas, one can watch the vehicles recede into the distance until they are tiny specks. Eventually, they disappear from view.
Their farewell is a moment Kathy will remember. This is the last time she will see her husband and son alive.
Throughout the next week, Tim and his companions chase during the daylight hours and document lightning by night. The schedule makes for some exceptionally long days. “You’re sleeping or you’re working,” says Walt Lyons, Tim’s project partner. “These are twelve- to eighteen-hour shifts. It’s not unusual for field campaigns to burn the candle at both ends. You’re at the mercy of the storm.”
On May 29, they settle around Salina, Kansas, as a staging ground for Tim’s PhOCAL mission. That night, the many eyes of the LIV are fixed on a field of wind turbines like ancient cenotaphs in the strobing light. Reaching 12,000 frames per second, Tim’s Phantom cameras slow the world down to an almost unfathomable timescale. An incandescent filament erupts from the top of the turbine, bisects itself, and blooms outward in delicate, arcing points of Day-Glo light. It all happens within microseconds, captured for the first time by the LIV.
By the thirtieth, the storms in central Kansas are withering. The men head south to Oklahoma. On a country road east of Guthrie, Tim and the guys are parked at the dirt entrance of a pasture gate, when a familiar crew pulls up behind them. Bruce Lee and Cathy Finley are out chasing for the pure enjoyment of it—no mesonets, no grad students. They’d seen Tim’s Cobalt earlier in the week, and they’re eager to reconnect now.
Carl stands on the side of the road, watching weakening storms move east. “We killed it,” he calls out to Lee and Finley, referring to the day’s guttering tornado potential.
“I thought we killed it.” Finley laughs.
They set to swapping post-op reports on a fairly uneventful afternoon. Lee and Finley had seen a brief tornado. Tim, Carl, and Paul had busted. Finley shows Carl some shots she’d taken of an EF4 in Kansas two days earlier. He’s distraught; the lightning project had forced them to miss the storm. Talk now turns to TWISTEX. Tim has scraped together enough money for a limited mission in June, just to test and calibrate equipment. Lee and Finley have updated the mesonets, and Tim is currently developing the next-generation TOWER. It isn’t ready just yet, but he should have more time to work on the device as soon as the lightning project wraps up for the year.
They all lean against their cars and gaze out across the low hills and the post oaks. The sun is setting, and the rear flank of the storm is ablaze with its deep vermilion light. It feels like old times for a moment. But soon, Tim has to head back north. He left the LIV in Kansas to chase tornadoes in the Chevy Cobalt, and he needs to retrieve the rig.
In all likelihood, they’ll be back down here tomorrow. The signs are
