2013-05-31 EVENT: KS, OK, MO, IL

[B Doss]

It did shift rather suddenly (Bob, thank you for you eye-witness report). I wasn't there, but from the images and videos, I also felt that Tim and his team were in a quite peculiar location relative to this tornado. A storm's tendency to shift E-SE should never be an expectation of it's behavior.

"Mr. Samaras invented remote instruments that were perfectly good at getting everything of scientific import out of the inside of tornadoes (including useful video footage), but that wasn't good enough. . .And now thanks to the ubiquitous "armored vehicles", Everest has been climbed. Practically the only thing that's left is driving straight through a twister with some normal vehicle; and slowly, that's what people are moving towards - and no matter what some of us would rather believe, most of them as you observed are NOT "local yahoos". Take a look at the names of the youtube channels."

Jake, no feathers were ruffled. I think you and me are really coming to a similar conclusion and I think we all need to take a very objective view at what happened. Tim's scientific work, and his recording of 100mb drop in the 2003 Manchester tornado is the best quantitative piece of data we've been given since the sampling of wind speed near the surface by DOW in 1999, argumentatively, Tim's findings are perhaps even more impressive. He was a true scientist and intellectual by his very nature and we'll be missed.

 

[Stan Rose]

And now thanks to the ubiquitous "armored vehicles", Everest has been climbed

I used to bag peaks, and that's a good analogy. The tragedy of this event is in some ways comparable to the 96 Everest tragedy. If we follow the analogy, 10-15 years from now there will be 10X as many armored vehicles (some driven with smart technology by 80 year old blind passengers), the traffic will be 10X worse, but their stories will generate less media interest. The one comforting part of the analogy is that the number of fatalities on Everest hasnt risen dramatically since 96 (although last couple years havent been good) so maybe people will learn to be safer.

 

[Jeff Wright]

I often wonder about what has been done with narco-tanks confiscated by police and how they maybe used. Roll cages may also need to be looked at.

 

[Skip Talbot]

I'm looking for GPS logs from Friday and compiling them into a level 2 radar animation with the tornado tracks and street level mapping. If you chased El Reno on Friday and saved your log, please email or PM me so I can include your position in the video. We're still grieving the loss of friends from this event, but I think this animation could be an invaluable learning tool to study how the event unfolded and better ourselves for future events. Thanks

 

[R R Smith]

Here's the link to Dr. John Monteverdi's Op Ed for CNN. He was asked by CNN to do this. John wanted to make clear it was CNN's idea to include the photo of Tim Samaras' vehicle... not his. Most of us know John as an avid chaser and professor of meteorology at San Francisco State.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/03/opinion/monteverdi-storm-chasers/

 

[ericjkelly]

We still need to remind people that by comparison, chasing is one of the safest hobbies! More people have died fishing, hiking, biking, running, climbing, even watching nascar in person than chasing over the past 40 years!!! Think of all of the freak deaths in almost every other hobby.

 

[cstrunk]

We still need to remind people that by comparison, chasing is one of the safest hobbies! More people have died fishing, hiking, biking, running, climbing, even watching nascar in person than chasing over the past 40 years!!! Think of all of the freak deaths in almost every other hobby.

Not sure about calling it one of the safest, but as far as being killed by a tornado then yes that is very unlikely. However, I'd like to see if there are any statistics out there for known storm chasers killed while performing storm chasing related activities, namely driving to and from target areas. Or from lightning strikes. I'm sure some of these are never heard of from amateur chasers not involved directly within the chaser community.

 

[ericjkelly]

True, but I still think the numbers are very very small.

There are much more dangerous "hobbies"

 

[Darren Lo]

Despite the growing numbers of chasers lately, I'm sure the total number of man-hours devoted to storm chasing over the past 40 years has been a tiny fraction of those involved in more mainstream activities like hiking/fishing/biking/etc. I'd like to see statistics on that before making any conclusions about the overall safety, or lack thereof, of this hobby.

 

[Jake Orosi]

We still need to remind people that by comparison, chasing is one of the safest hobbies!

No, I really don't think we do; in fact, I think all the "inside the tornado" videos whose makers managed to accidentally survive, have done enough all by themselves to convince the public at large that it's perfectly safe to drive through tons of swirling debris traveling around you at over a hundred miles per hour.

 

[James Gustina]

Not sure about calling it one of the safest, but as far as being killed by a tornado then yes that is very unlikely. However, I'd like to see if there are any statistics out there for known storm chasers killed while performing storm chasing related activities, namely driving to and from target areas. Or from lightning strikes. I'm sure some of these are never heard of from amateur chasers not involved directly within the chaser community.

The only other death I can think of that is known was an OU student about 20-25 years ago who hydroplaned while on a storm and ended up rolling his car. Everyone else survived but him so far as I remember.

 

[Chuck Robertson]

The only other death I can think of that is known was an OU student about 20-25 yars ago who hydroplaned while on a storm and ended up rolling his car. Everyone else survived but him so far as I remember.

If the accident you are referring to is the same that I recall, that was an OU student that was killed while driving down a dirt road and rolled his car. Not sure if he just simply lost control or lost it in the mud or what. However, I believe it was more like the early 80's when that occurred.

As far as the overall danger of storm chasing compared to other very large mainstream activities, I could not disagree with you more. There are millions that attend the activities that you mentioned. However there are only a few thousand storm chasers. If you do the math, I suspect that even if you only count 3 or 4 tornado chasing deaths, you still wind up with a much much more dangerous activity in storm chasing.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

If the accident you are referring to is the same that I recall, that was an OU student that was killed while driving down a dirt road and rolled his car. Not sure if he just simply lost control or lost it in the mud or what. However, I believe it was more like the early 80's when that occurred.

As far as the overall danger of storm chasing compared to other very large mainstream activities, I could not disagree with you more. There are millions that attend the activities that you mentioned. However there are only a few thousand storm chasers. If you do the math, I suspect that even if you only count 3 or 4 tornado chasing deaths, you still wind up with a much much more dangerous activity in storm chasing.

I believe that the OU student who died was neither on a dirt road and didn't happen near any storms. It happened in the 80's, and from what I remember the student was on their way to a target area and while driving swerved to miss an animal that entered the roadway and as a result wrecked. I heard the roads were wet and that hydroplaning contributed to the student losing control.

 

[Logan Karsten]

Not to derail the thread on the events that occurred, but I was watching Piers Morgan tonight on CNN, and he was interviewing Carl's father regarding Friday's events. Carl's father stated a very interesting piece of information that I was not aware of. Apparently, the sheriff that arrived on the scene of the car found three (maybe two, I can't remember the exact number) probes on the ground that were still turned on.....

Now, this is information that Carl's father stated on a CNN interview that he was told by a sheriff, so I have no idea on the validity of this information, but it is very interesting to hear that....

He didn't state what kind of probes they were, or what they looked like, but it's entirely possible Tim was deploying probes right before he got taken over by the tornado, or potentially a satellite tornado that sprung up quickly.

 

[Chuck Robertson]

I believe that the OU student who died was neither on a dirt road and didn't happen near any storms. It happened in the 80's, and from what I remember the student was on their way to a target area and while driving swerved to miss an animal that entered the roadway and as a result wrecked. I heard the roads were wet and that hydroplaning contributed to the student losing control.

I think we must be talking about two separate mishaps from what I can tell. I seem to recall, with the accident I am referring to, the individual did lose control on a dirt or mud road, and was very near a storm. Very tragic either way.