AUTHOR’S NOTE
IN DOCUMENTING THE life of Tim Samaras, from the first appliances he dismantled on his boyhood bedroom floor to his last moments alive, I relied heavily on a network of dozens of intimates—family and friends, chase buddies and colleagues. Having never met Tim myself, I knew him at the start only as the daring researcher on the Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers. Without those close to Tim—who generously opened up their lives and shared hours upon hours of their time—this work of journalism would never have been possible.
Nothing in this account has been fictionalized—no characters, events, or dialogue are composites. Any direct quotations are drawn from recordings of Tim, his writings, news reports, and the accounts of those present for the events in question. Any scenes or glimpses into his interior world spring from his own personal correspondence, his or his colleagues’ voluminous chase footage, and interviews with the people who knew him best.
Just as essential to recreating this rarefied subculture were my own experiences beneath the storm. In the reporting of this book, I spent weeks on the road chasing tornadoes with some of Tim’s best friends. I knew that to understand him, I’d first have to find the swirling wind myself. Over days, over thousands of miles, over too many busts and near misses, I lived in Tim’s world. I felt what must have been the same exhaustion, the same boredom, the same disappointment at each storm that failed to deliver. After three weeks I was almost ready to give up. Then, our luck suddenly changed. The next day I found myself in Nebraska, face to face with two simultaneously occurring EF4 tornadoes. I got it then. I have at least some grasping sense, now, of why Tim went out year after year in search of them. I know how this wonder, this adrenaline, can exert a pull as irresistible as gravity. And I’d be lying if I said I haven’t gone chasing since, even though this book is finished. I feel that pull still: when I hear the big black clouds are getting ready to boil, I can’t help but wish I were there. More practically, those weeks spent with seasoned veterans like Ed Grubb, Ben McMillan, Tony Laubach, and Dan Robinson gave me insight into how chasers think, how they operate near dangerous storms, and how Tim, in particular, maneuvered for the intercept. Though my own adventures with these men are not recounted in The Man Who Caught the Storm, they nonetheless inform every page.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FIRST AND FOREMOST, I want to thank Kathy Samaras. Over the more than three years it took to research and write this book, I thought of her daily. The memories she has shared constitute the most closely held truths of her life. Many were painful, but her words opened a window of understanding on the man she loved. If this book manages to capture even a flicker of Tim’s fire, it’s because of her. In equal measure, Tim’s daughters, Amy and Jenny, and his son Matt each illuminated Tim’s personality and life as a father. And I’m grateful as well for their precious stories about Paul, a beloved brother and son. Indeed, the generosity of the Samaras clan, including Tim’s brother Jim, has made this book possible.
I relied heavily on the kindnesses and forbearance of those who knew and loved Tim Samaras, Paul Samaras, and Carl Young. Bob Young, Carl’s father, spent hours reminiscing with me about his son. Ben McMillan, TWISTEX’s resident EMT and my hurricane buddy, brought me along for one of my first storm chases; we spent an exhausting and often exhilarating week in pursuit of the swirling wind, trekking from one end of Tornado Alley to the other. With Ed Grubb and Tony Laubach, two stalwart mesonet drivers, I had the incredible experience of witnessing two simultaneously occurring EF4 tornadoes in Nebraska. McMillan, Laubach, and Grubb invited me into their singular world and, in turn, allowed me to better know Tim, Carl, and Paul.
The learning curve of atmospheric science is a precipitous one, to say the least, and as a writer, not a meteorologist, I remain stuck near the bottom. To ensure that this book presented the science accessibly for the layperson and accurately enough for the well-informed, I sought out the help of talented researchers and forecasters, none so often as Gabe Garfield, a research meteorologist at the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies. Gabe patiently fielded what must have seemed an inexhaustible stream of questions, not only about the science but about Tim, Carl, and Paul’s final chase. Headquartered at the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma, he took up the inquiry himself in the days, weeks, and months after the El Reno storm. He drove me along the route they took, annotating nearly every moment with their words and details about the tornado’s location and evolution. As a cheerful and dependable resource, Gabe was essential to my reporting.
Over these years, I’ve had the opportunity to get to know a vast network of chasers, researchers, and friends whose lives Tim has touched, and whose recollections helped me to piece together the arc of his own life: Bruce Lee and Cathy Finley, TWISTEX’s seasoned field researchers, were kind enough to share their unvarnished accounts of the team’s most important intercepts—warts and all—including deployment footage that put me in the passenger seat next to them. Along with Tim, they were TWISTEX’s heart; it would be impossible to overstate the importance of their testimony. Larry Brown, Tim’s longtime boss at ARA, DRI, and NTS, led me through the development of Tim’s unusual skillset. Tim’s earliest comrades-in-arms, Pat Porter and Brad Carter, told me stories about his early chases, in a time before the Samaras name rang out in the world of atmospheric science. Anton Seimon, a fellow chaser and
