Another Storm Chaser Tragedy

Last week, I spent some time writing some thoughts of the Weather Channels' Mike Bettes being involved in an accident where he and his crew were knocked off the road by a tornado. Mike Bettes is best known has an on-air personality on the Weather Channel. In an attempt to harness some ratings, Mike was put out into a tornado, representing the Weather Channel. Cameras rolling, we were able to get live reports once again from the ever increasing phenomenon of "extreme weather." The Weather Channel has gotten into this over the past decade or so. They send parts of their team to the areas of big weather events. We have seen it for hurricanes, winter storms, wildfires and now tornadoes. Each time, seemingly getting more dangerous, the audience is kept in awe over the live feeds. The willingness of people to watch, drives the market and heightens the dangers as more and more compete for the ratings. I said my piece on the Weather Channel and their close call with a tornado two days ago here: Weather Channel Rant (click)

Here is Mike and his crew's car:

The other side of the media hype for ratings is the scientific side. Storm Chasers actually chase storms for a purpose. There are chasers out there to learn more about storms, lightening, tornadoes, hail, winds etc etc. This information that is collected will hopefully be able to help predict, model, and interpret severe weather so that storms can be better predicted, warning times can increase and lives can be saved......lives being saved. While we get caught up in the adrenaline rush of seeing these live feeds of those out seeking a thrill, there are those there with a purpose.

Yesterday morning, I learned of the death of Tim Samaras, Paul Samaras (Tims son) and Carl Young. For many, the names will not sound familiar. For those that know, one of the greats was lost. I first started following Tim, like many, watching Discovery Channels "StormChasers" show. This is also where I started following Reed Timmer and Sean Casey. While Reed and Sean both had the cool cars ( Dominator and TIV) which resembled tanks rather than cars, it was Tim who had the White Truck with the cargo door in the back. Reed and Sean both try and get into the tornadoes path and try to intercept for their research. Tim and his crew would get into the path, drop some probes and get out of the way. Reed and Sean were the adrenaline pumpers and Tim was just kinda that guy who was there for the research and was the filler between Reed and Sean. Tim was always the cautious one, playing it safe, always leaving an escape route in case something out of the blue happened. He was the one who preached safe practices and limited his risk as much as he could. He was there to research tornadoes and hail. He had some groundbreaking research that has yet to be released. His contributions to the field were astronomical and we will learn more about his research in the years to come. On Friday, while deployed for a tornado in El Reno, OK Tim, his son, Paul, and long time co worker Carl were swept off the highway and killed. In this tornado, there was 16 people killed all together. Another death along the highway involved is a mother and her child.

Tims truck:

Yes, saving lives is a good thing. Countless times the story is the same; tornado comes, areas are devastated and there is always a fatality count. More and more though, we are finding lower and lower deaths. This could be directly related to the good that storm chasing brings. The countless research probes launched, the cameras, etc etc. We have learned a lot from the people willing to risk it all for research, and there remains a lot more to learn. Hopefully as time goes on, we can improve warnings and forecasts and more lives can be saved.