Which storm chaser dies

Taylor grew up in Oklahoma, part of the nation's iconic "tornado alley," and studied meteorology at a University of Oklahoma.

Taylor joined the Storm Chasers cast in , shortly after its premiere. Discovery canceled the show in We lost a legend. RIP my best friend and storm chasing partner, Joel Taylor.

Storm Chasers was canceled after five seasons in January Timmer and others from the cast continued a web series, Tornado Chasers , funded by Kickstarter campaigns. Overall, the tornado was responsible for eight fatalities and over injuries. FB Tweet More. You'll get the latest updates on this topic in your browser notifications.

A scene from Storm Chasers. Credit: Discovery Channel. By getting ground-based data, he hoped scientists could better understand these tricky beasts, and use the information to hone their forecasts and design structures to withstand the roaring winds.

As Samaras once stressed : A ground-based measurement from within the twister "is especially crucial, because it provides data about the lowest ten meters of a tornado, where houses, vehicles, and people are. Currently, seven out of ten tornado forecasts from National Weather Service are false alarms, and the lead time on an oncoming twister is an average of just 13 minutes. In the early half of the 20th century, tornadoes were deemed so unpredictable the word was forbidden from weather forecasts to prevent unnecessary outbreaks of hysteria.

Progress on the forecasting front moved slowly until the s, when the first Doppler radar scans illuminated the elements of these twisting storms. Scientists could track the storm's development and soon learned to spot the signs of a developing twister. But there was still much to learn.

As Hargrove writes, the Doppler can say nothing about temperature, humidity or pressure inside the tornado. Since the s , researchers had been attempting to measure these basic pillars of atmospheric science from the tornado's heart. But many of these devices weighed hundreds of pounds, making them impractical to move in the few heart-pounding moments a chaser has to deploy. Others simply couldn't withstand the tornado's winds, which have been measured up to around miles per hour.

Many factors can affect the developing tornado—from changes in air temperature to the tug of nearby storms. And unlike hurricanes, which can be spotted days off shore, tornadoes develop over the course of hours or minutes, which makes taking on-the-ground measurements even more challenging. As Hargrove says, "tornadoes are creatures of variability. That's where Samaras came in. Samaras, born in Lakewood, Colorado, was curious from the start. He became an amateur radio operator, using parts of discarded electronics to build transmitters.

He also had a lifelong love of storms and weather, sparked by a childhood obsession by the twister that swept up Dorothy and Toto in The Wizard of Oz. Instead, he got a job at the Denver Research Institute fresh out of high school, where he tested explosive weapons systems and ran a suite of high-end electronics to characterize the blasts. The position was a dream for Samaras, but his love of storms kept calling him back. His foray into chasing was cautious and methodical, including his enrollment in a basic meteorology program in It turned out he had a talent for spotting the subtle signs of a developing storm, reading the twister's moves as if the winds whispered directions in his ear.

He'd record every moment of his pursuit, later selling the videos to weather stations. Samaras soon became known as "the guy who always gets the killer shot," Hargrove writes. But, he continues, "Tim [had] never been content to merely observe. In , mechanical engineer Frank Tatom asked Samaras to deploy a seismic sensor—dubbed the snail—near a tornado.

It was a test of an early warning system that never panned out.