Timothy Michael Samaras was an American engineer and storm chaser best known for
his field research on tornadoes and time on the Discovery Channel show, Storm
Chasers. Early life
Samaras was born November 12, 1957 in Lakewood, Colorado, to Paul T. and
Margaret L. Samaras. Paul was a photographer and model airplane
distributor who was an Army projectionist in WWII. Tim assisted in
the photography and shop work. Margaret was born in 1926 and died in 2006. His
mother talked him into watching an annual television broadcast of The
Wizard of Oz at age six. "When the tornado appeared," he recalled. "I was
hooked!" It was the scene where the sky was black and got darker. The hens began
to go around in circles and the horses ran out of the barn. Aunt Em, Uncle
Henry, and their three farmworkers were shouting as well as clutching on to
their hats. Bundles of weeds blew past, then whole small trees. A wide black
swirling column loomed on the horizon. It howled like an express train. Dorothy
and Toto struggled to get through the gate. But no sooner were they safe in
the farmhouse then the window fell in, and the entire house took off into that
storm, tumbling through the inky clouds. He attended Lasley Elementary and
O'Connell Junior High in Lakewood, before graduating from Alameda High
School in 1976. In his twenties, he began to chase storms "not for the
thrill, but the science." Career
Samaras was an autodidact who never received a college degree. He became an
amateur radio operator at age 12 and built transmitters using old television
sets. As an adult he held an Amateur Extra Class license, the highest amateur
radio class issued in the United States, and was proficient in Morse code. He
used ham radio for communications when storm chasing and was also a storm
spotter, reporting sightings of hazardous weather. At 16, he was a radio
technician and was service shop foreman at 17. Immediately out of high school
and without a résumé, he was hired as a walk in at the University of Denver
Research Institute. He obtained a Pentagon security clearance by 20,
testing and building weapons systems. Samaras became a prominent engineer at
Applied Research Associates initially focusing on blast testing and airline
crash investigations. The National Transportation Safety Board recognized
him for his investigations of the TWA Flight 800 crash. His research included
high-speed photography, such as on ballistics. He also worked at National
Technical Systems and Hyperion Technology Group.
In addition to tornadoes, he was interested in all aspects of convective
storms with particular research focus on lightning, for which he utilized cameras
shooting up to 1.4 million fps. An accomplished photographer and
videographer, another research method was photogrammetry, with some footage
derived from cameras in probes shooting from within tornadoes. Samaras also shot
for art and for pleasure. He was an avid amateur astronomer and also interested
in electronics and inventions. Samaras was the founder of a field
research team called Tactical Weather Instrumented Sampling in Tornadoes
EXperiment which sought to better understand tornadoes. His work was
funded in large part by the National Geographic Society which awarded him 18
grants for his field work. Samaras designed and built his own
weather instruments, known as probes, and deployed them in the path of
tornadoes in order to gain scientific insight into the inner workings of a
tornado. With one such in-situ probe, he captured the largest drop in atmospheric
pressure, 100 hPa in less than one minute, ever recorded when a F4 tornado
struck one of several probes placed near Manchester, South Dakota on June 24,
2003. The accomplishment is listed in the Guinness World Records as "greatest
pressure drop measured in a tornado". The probe was dropped in front of the
oncoming tornado a mere 82 seconds before it hit. The measurement is also
the lowest pressure, 850 hectopascals, ever recorded at Earth's surface when
adjusted for elevation. Samaras later described the tornado as the most
memorable of his career. Samaras' aerodynamic probes were a breakthrough
design for survivability inside tornadoes. A patent was pending for
instrumentation measuring winds in 3D. Samaras held a patent, "Thermal imaging
system for internal combustion engines", with Jon M. Lesko.
Samaras and his team logged over 35,000 miles of driving during the two peak
months of tornado season each year. When asked, Samaras said that the most
dangerous part about following tornadoes is not the actual storms themselves, but
rather the road hazards encountered along the way. In total, he tracked down
more than 125 tornadoes during his career. His colleagues considered him to
be one of the most careful chasers in the business.
Beginning in 1998, Samaras founded and co-produced the National Storm Chasers
Convention, an annual event held near Denver and attended by hundreds of
chasers from around the world. Samaras's widow, Kathy, revealed in her first news
interview since his death that she will continue ChaserCon, which consistently
attracts luminary scientists and chasers as speakers. In 2005, he was named an
"Emerging Explorer" by the National Geographic Society. From 2009 until the
show's cancellation in 2012, Samaras was a featured personality on the Discovery
Channel's Storm Chasers. He also worked for Boeing, doing field testing on
hail-resistant skins for aircraft, and for the federal government during his
career. According to Eileen O'Neill, president of the Discovery networks,
Samaras' work was directly responsible for increased warning times ahead of
tornadoes. Samaras coauthored, along with Stefan
Bechtel and Greg Forbes, Tornado Hunter: Getting Inside the Most Violent Storms
on Earth, in 2009. Samaras authored or coauthored around one dozen scientific
papers. He also contributed to Storm Track magazine. He appeared in major
pieces in National Geographic in April 2004, June 2005, August 2012, and
November 2013. He was also widely interviewed by news stations,
newspapers, and magazines and appeared in documentaries.
= Death= In the spring of 2013, TWISTEX was
conducting lightning research when active tornadic periods ensued in mid to
late May, so Samaras decided to deploy atmospheric pressure probes and to test
infrasound tornado sensors that were still under development. At 6:23 p.m. on
May 31, 2013, Samaras, his 24-year-old son Paul, and TWISTEX team member Carl
Young, 45, were killed by a violent wedge tornado with winds of 302 mph near
the Regional Airport of El Reno, Oklahoma. The TWISTEX vehicle was struck
by a subvortex, which generate the highest winds and some of which were
moving at 175 mph within the parent tornado. Their Chevy Cobalt was
distinguishable as a vehicle to the first responding sheriff's deputy only
due to its single intact wheel, as it had been compressed into a ball of metal
after the tornado tumbled it approximately one-half mile.
The tornado was sampled by University of Oklahoma RaXPol radar as 2.6 miles wide,
the widest tornado ever recorded. The true size of the multiple-vortex tornado
confused onlookers by its mammoth proportions containing orbiting
subvortices larger than average tornadoes and its expansive transparent
to translucent outer circulation. The strong inflow and outer circulation
winds in conjunction with rocky roads and a relatively underpowered vehicle
also hampered driving away from the tornado. The tornado simultaneously took
an unexpected sharp turn closing on their position as it rapidly accelerated
within a few minutes from about 20 mph to as much as 60 mph in forward movement
and swiftly expanded from about 1 mile to 2.6 miles wide in about 30 seconds,
and was mostly obscured in heavy precipitation, all of which combined so
that several other chasers were also hit or had near misses. It was the first
known instance of a storm chaser or a meteorologist killed by a tornado.
Even before it was known that Samaras, his son, and Young had been killed, the
event led many to question storm chasing tactics particularly in close proximity
to tornadoes. In addition to the three TWISTEX members, the tornado took the
lives of seven other people, including local resident Richard Charles Henderson
who decided to follow the storm. Atmospheric scientists and storm chasers
embarked on a major project to gather information and analyze what happened
regarding chaser actions and meteorological occurrences. A makeshift
memorial was established at the site soon after the incident and a
crowdfunded permanent memorial is under development, spearheaded by Doug Gerten,
the deputy who first found the vehicle wreckage.
Meteorologists at the Storm Prediction Center issued a statement saying they
were very saddened by Tim's death. "Samaras was a respected tornado
researcher and friend ... who brought to the field a unique portfolio of
expertise in engineering, science, writing and videography," read the
statement. Severe weather expert Greg Forbes called Samaras "a groundbreaker
in terms of the kind of research he was doing on severe thunderstorms and
tornadoes". Meteorologist Jim Cantore remarked "This is a very sad day for the
meteorological community and the families of our friends lost. Tim
Samaras was a pioneer and great man." National Geographic remarked "Tim was a
courageous and brilliant scientist who fearlessly pursued tornadoes and
lightning in the field in an effort to better understand these phenomena." On
Facebook, Samaras' brother said he died "doing what [he] LOVED. Chasing
Tornadoes". On June 2, Discovery dedicated "Mile Wide Tornado: Oklahoma,"
a special about the May 20 Moore, Oklahoma tornado, to the memory of
Samaras and his TWISTEX colleagues. Samaras is survived by his brothers Jim
and Jack, wife Kathy, two daughters, two grandchildren, and a son from a previous
relationship, Matt Winter. His memorial service was held on June 6, 2013, at
Mission Hills Church in Littleton, Colorado.
Personal life Samaras and his wife Kathy had three
children: Paul, Amy Gregg, and Jennifer Scott. The family lived on 35 acres near
Bennett, Colorado, at the time of his death. The open space enabled Tim to
erect ham radio and other towers and provided ample room for workshops. He
learned of the property through real estate investment work that he did on
the side and to which his brother Jim introduced him. Samaras had another son,
Matt Winter, whom he had only learned about seven years before Samaras' death
and who was welcomed into the family. Winter was also fascinated by weather
and was informed by his mother that Tim was his father after he heard Samaras
speak at the 2006 Severe Storms and Doppler Radar Conference in Des Moines,
Iowa. In 2011, Samaras took time off chasing
to help build homes in Alabama for victims of tornadoes earlier that year.
According to O'Neill he worked "from dawn to dusk" with "the same dedication
and focus he brought to his meteorological work".
References External links
Thunder Chase - Samaras' personal storm chasing website
TWISTEX Explorers bio at National Geographic
Society Viewing the El Reno Storm
Chasing and Pressure Drop Safety Lessons From El Reno
El Reno: Lessons From the Most Dangerous Tornado in Storm Observing History
Tim Samaras at the Internet Movie Database
Tim Samaras at Find a Grave