Reporting the Tragic End of Storm Chaser Tim Samaras
Author Robert Draper on his National Geographic cover story.
A tornado barrels down a road toward tornado chaser Tim Samaras.
Photograph by Carsten Peter, National Geographic
Photograph by Rebecca Hale, National Geographic
Published October 16, 2013
Veteran journalist Robert Draper sat down recently to discuss his November cover story in National Geographic magazine, "The Monster Storm," with editor Victoria Pope.
The November cover story is a profile of Tim Samaras and a profile of the El Reno, Oklahoma, tornado at the same time. How did you see the relationship between the two?
Well, it wasn't the straightforwardly scientific relationship that one might expect. Without question Samaras was deeply interested in tornadic research, particularly insofar as gathering data with his probes might result in quicker response times to tornadoes, thus saving lives.
But even the most cautious and data driven of storm chasers aren't just driven by clinical fascination. As anyone who's been in frequent proximity with supercells—including magazine Editor in Chief Chris Johns—can attest, the experience is elementally staggering. The experts I interviewed became children before my eyes as they described what it's like. Samaras, to his credit, made no bones about his fixation. The DVDs he and his son produced about tornadoes were entitled Driven by Passion.
This story introduced you to the American storm-chasing community—a tight-knit, single-minded subculture. How did you get the storm chasers to trust you?
Sources talk to journalists who harbor a sincere curiosity about just what it is that motivates the people they're interviewing. That wasn't hard for me at all with respect to storm chasers, who constitute a curious and largely male tribe of obsessive, insatiable romancers of natural monstrosities.
But I think their willingness to talk to me was overwhelmingly a measure of their respect and affection for Tim Samaras and their desire that his story be told.
How did Tim Samaras fit into the storm-chasing world?
In that community, Samaras was looked at as first among equals—first as co-founder of the annual storm-chasing confab ChaserCon, then as the inventor who entered the Guinness World Records book for recording the lowest-ever pressure drop of a tornado, and finally as a TV star on the Discovery Channel.
But I think what also tightened their bond was the fact that Samaras never viewed himself as being above the rest. Indeed, he felt a kinship to the amateurs, given that Samaras himself never went to college and therefore didn't come to the scene with gold-embossed academic credentials. In the video snippets of him that accompany my story on the website, you can hear this common-man viewpoint in Samaras's voice, just as you could once read it in his Facebook posts and Tweets. Tim Samaras loved tornadoes, but he also loved people, and he truly enjoyed the communal nature attendant to storm chasing.
Samaras had his own storm-chasing team, TWISTEX. What's happened to its members since the tragic events of May 31?
They remain in contact and would like to keep TWISTEX operations going. But they face a great deal of uncertainty. First, they're sensitized to the feelings of Tim Samaras's family and don't want to overstep while emotions are still raw. Second, Samaras took with him a vastness of institutional knowledge, not to mention one-of-a-kind ingenuity, that the TWISTEX team will be at pains to replace. And third, they lost in Samaras the most articulate spokesperson for their pursuits—which is to say, their best fund-raiser. Stay tuned.
Were you surprised when the El Reno tornado was downgraded to an EF3-level storm? That's quite mundane for a storm you describe in your story as "magisterial and brutish."
Yes and no. The Enhanced Fujita system measures, at bottom, human damage, and being that this tornado primarily cut through rural areas, casualties were, thankfully, minimal. But by any other scientific measure, this tornado was of monumental scale. To my mind, it's like downgrading the Great White Whale in Melville's Moby Dick to the status of Fairly Sizable Light-Tinted Mammal.
You reported your story in midsummer. Have any new details surrounding the final hours of Samaras, his son Paul, and Carl Young emerged since then?
Those few details that have recently emerged still don't tell us that much. For example, we now know that the TWISTEX car being driven by Carl Young was in reverse at the time of collision, and one could infer from this fact that the team was desperately trying to escape from the path of the tornado the moment it became visible to them. That's not surprising to me. The TWISTEX team had definitely set out to deploy their probes, but I'm convinced they had no desire to court danger. They simply couldn't see that, beneath the rain wrapping, danger was charging toward them.
If you were still reporting the story, what questions would you be chasing after now?
Chiefly, I'd want to know things that are in fact unknowable—among them, what if any discussions the three storm chasers had about the pros and cons of deploying probes using the lightweight Cobalt [vehicle]. I'm convinced that a shortage of funds compelled Samaras to save on gasoline costs by leaving his storm-chasing truck behind and riding in the smaller car instead. And it's worth pointing out that a number of other storm chasers opt for lighter vehicles for the same reason. But it wasn't like Samaras to deploy his probes—and thus intrude directly into a tornado's path—from the flimsier confines of the Cobalt. I would bet that this was not an easy call for them. Considering the ferocity of the tornado at El Reno, perhaps the bigger truck wouldn't have made a difference anyway. We'll never know.
The November cover story is a profile of Tim Samaras and a profile of the El Reno, Oklahoma, tornado at the same time. How did you see the relationship between the two?
Well, it wasn't the straightforwardly scientific relationship that one might expect. Without question Samaras was deeply interested in tornadic research, particularly insofar as gathering data with his probes might result in quicker response times to tornadoes, thus saving lives.
But even the most cautious and data driven of storm chasers aren't just driven by clinical fascination. As anyone who's been in frequent proximity with supercells—including magazine Editor in Chief Chris Johns—can attest, the experience is elementally staggering. The experts I interviewed became children before my eyes as they described what it's like. Samaras, to his credit, made no bones about his fixation. The DVDs he and his son produced about tornadoes were entitled Driven by Passion.
This story introduced you to the American storm-chasing community—a tight-knit, single-minded subculture. How did you get the storm chasers to trust you?
Sources talk to journalists who harbor a sincere curiosity about just what it is that motivates the people they're interviewing. That wasn't hard for me at all with respect to storm chasers, who constitute a curious and largely male tribe of obsessive, insatiable romancers of natural monstrosities.
But I think their willingness to talk to me was overwhelmingly a measure of their respect and affection for Tim Samaras and their desire that his story be told.
How did Tim Samaras fit into the storm-chasing world?
In that community, Samaras was looked at as first among equals—first as co-founder of the annual storm-chasing confab ChaserCon, then as the inventor who entered the Guinness World Records book for recording the lowest-ever pressure drop of a tornado, and finally as a TV star on the Discovery Channel.
But I think what also tightened their bond was the fact that Samaras never viewed himself as being above the rest. Indeed, he felt a kinship to the amateurs, given that Samaras himself never went to college and therefore didn't come to the scene with gold-embossed academic credentials. In the video snippets of him that accompany my story on the website, you can hear this common-man viewpoint in Samaras's voice, just as you could once read it in his Facebook posts and Tweets. Tim Samaras loved tornadoes, but he also loved people, and he truly enjoyed the communal nature attendant to storm chasing.
Samaras had his own storm-chasing team, TWISTEX. What's happened to its members since the tragic events of May 31?
They remain in contact and would like to keep TWISTEX operations going. But they face a great deal of uncertainty. First, they're sensitized to the feelings of Tim Samaras's family and don't want to overstep while emotions are still raw. Second, Samaras took with him a vastness of institutional knowledge, not to mention one-of-a-kind ingenuity, that the TWISTEX team will be at pains to replace. And third, they lost in Samaras the most articulate spokesperson for their pursuits—which is to say, their best fund-raiser. Stay tuned.
Were you surprised when the El Reno tornado was downgraded to an EF3-level storm? That's quite mundane for a storm you describe in your story as "magisterial and brutish."
Yes and no. The Enhanced Fujita system measures, at bottom, human damage, and being that this tornado primarily cut through rural areas, casualties were, thankfully, minimal. But by any other scientific measure, this tornado was of monumental scale. To my mind, it's like downgrading the Great White Whale in Melville's Moby Dick to the status of Fairly Sizable Light-Tinted Mammal.
You reported your story in midsummer. Have any new details surrounding the final hours of Samaras, his son Paul, and Carl Young emerged since then?
Those few details that have recently emerged still don't tell us that much. For example, we now know that the TWISTEX car being driven by Carl Young was in reverse at the time of collision, and one could infer from this fact that the team was desperately trying to escape from the path of the tornado the moment it became visible to them. That's not surprising to me. The TWISTEX team had definitely set out to deploy their probes, but I'm convinced they had no desire to court danger. They simply couldn't see that, beneath the rain wrapping, danger was charging toward them.
If you were still reporting the story, what questions would you be chasing after now?
Chiefly, I'd want to know things that are in fact unknowable—among them, what if any discussions the three storm chasers had about the pros and cons of deploying probes using the lightweight Cobalt [vehicle]. I'm convinced that a shortage of funds compelled Samaras to save on gasoline costs by leaving his storm-chasing truck behind and riding in the smaller car instead. And it's worth pointing out that a number of other storm chasers opt for lighter vehicles for the same reason. But it wasn't like Samaras to deploy his probes—and thus intrude directly into a tornado's path—from the flimsier confines of the Cobalt. I would bet that this was not an easy call for them. Considering the ferocity of the tornado at El Reno, perhaps the bigger truck wouldn't have made a difference anyway. We'll never know.
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