Storm Chasing

When those tornadoes started spinning across Oklahoma a couple of weeks back, I was as riveted to the TV as the next guy. There’s just something about the unpredictability – and, of course, the potential devastation - of this type of storm that makes them so fascinating.

Sure, I watch the hurricane and blizzard tracking all the time. But while they do have their twists and turns, and as often as not peter out after we’ve all hunkered down prepared for the worst, they do tend to stay more or less on track.

With tornadoes, it’s the weird touch-downs that are so particularly unsettling.

Not to mention the crazy images of houses and cows being sucked into the swirl and plunked down miles away.

Anyway, while watching the latest rounds from Tornado Alley, I actually learned a few things. That the clay soil of Oklahoma makes it difficult (but not impossible) to build basements. That cost as much as anything prevents people from including basements, safe rooms, or some other type of shelter in the plans when new houses are built. (Wonder how many opt for a walk-in closet or “great room” rather than a means to shelter in place?) That a car is a really terrible place to be when a tornado’s bearing down on you, and you’re better off getting out of your car and throwing yourself face down in a ditch. That sometimes those in the path of a tornado may receive conflicting advice – as in the weatherman who was urging residents in a certain area to get in their cars and drive south to outrun the tornado, while emergency management personnel were telling folks to go knock on the door of the prudent neighbor with a safe room. That there are serious, professional storm chasers whose work may actually saves lives. And that even serious, professional storm chasers – and not just the thrill-seeking lunkheads and/or members of the media, perhaps distinguishable from the thrill-seeking lunkheads only in that they are traveling in cars/van with a newstation logo on the side  – can get killed by a tornado.

On the one hand, you almost wish that if someone were going to get sucked up in the vortex, it would be the thrill-seeking amateur lunkhead rather than the skilled professional. Apparently, there are droves of amateurs who hop in their cars, camera in hand, with hopes of being the ones to get the best capture on video, all the while getting in the way of the serious plodders (i.e., the scientists) who are recording information on humidity, temperature, wind velocity – the closer the better - so that they can fuel the models that are making tornado predicting more accurate.

"It's dangerous to have a lot of storm chasers out there because you create traffic jams near a twister and then it's impossible to get out of the way," [Howard Bluestein, University of Oklahoma] says. "With so many cars in an area, it becomes impossible to get out of the way if something happens."

[Tim] Samaras commented on the growing number of storm chasers in an interview he gave to National Geographic in May.

"We run into [storm chasers] all the time," he said. "On a big tornado day in Oklahoma, you can have hundreds of storm chasers lined up down the road ... We know ahead of time when we chase in Oklahoma, there's going to be a traffic jam." (Source: National Geographic.)

Tim Samaras, of course, is the weather professional who was one of three killed in the latest Oklahoma tornado.  His death apparently comes as something of a surprise, given that he was considered the anti-thesis of the reckless, cowboy storm chaser. He was cautious: a scientist, an engineer.

Samaras was in his fifties, and had been storm chasing for years. He was drawn to tornadoes as a kid while watching – you can’t make this up – The Wizard of Oz, and made it his life’s work.

He was also a founder of TWISTEX, which does tornado research, and had developed a number of probes to take storm measurements.

Worse ways to go out than doing something you love, that’s for sure.

Sadly – and, of course, there’s always a sadly - his twenty-something son, Paul, who also worked at TWISTEX, was killed as well.

Somehow, someone in his fifties dying doing what he loved is easier to take than someone in his twenties dying doing what he loved.

In truth, although I was vaguely aware of storm chasers before reading about the death of Tim Samaras, there’s an awful lot on them out there – and an awful lot of info on storm chasing, too.

Needless to stay, I didn’t plow through all mega-million hits when I googled “storm chaser.” But in addition to the bogus certificate programs and “professional storm chasers” advertising their willingness to do product endorsements, I came across the bracing opinion of meteorologist John Knox, who cried “bunkum” on storm chasing – professional and amateur -  in USA Today last week.

Without addressing the merits of Samaras’ work – other than to poo-poo most distinctions between good and bad chasers -   Knox pointed out that, since the movie Twister came out in 1996, meteorology programs began offering storm-chasing classes, and the number of meteorology degrees sharply increased. Many of these students, Knox argues, specialized in the “experiential learning” of storm chasing, rather than the nuts and bolts math and science work that real meteorology requires. 

Which met the perfect storm of 24/7 “news”, promoting an interest in what “one colleague calls this "ptornography," tornado pornography,” and which Knox fears – with the recent Oklahoma deaths – will now start bringing us “tornado ‘snuff films’.”

Knox wants the world to:

Embrace the scientific and educational good in chasing, and there is some, but condemn the rest publicly.

And put an end to “storm chasing” as a career option “for the hundreds or thousands who went to college thinking they'd be the next cable-TV chaser hero.”

Having spent a couple of hours gaping at the TV reports following the recent Oklahoma tornadoes, I guess I let myself get a tad too close to becoming a “ptornography” consumer.  But I really don’t want to see any "tornado ‘snuff film’.” Next time, I’ll just hit the channel cruiser and find a re-run of Rockford Files or something…

Meanwhile, I still don’t think it’s all that bad to die doing something you love, even if it’s not apt to happen in the wonderful world of marketing.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

My friend Valerie sent me this from NewsOK, which shows a storm chasing tourism pic. Yikes! (Thanks, V.)