it’s Wednesday morning Sioux City Iowa
and a major storm is moving into the
region we call it freight train type
storms you you get yourself positioned
northeast of these storms and you just
catch them basically as they go by
catching storms is something Tim Samaras
has been doing for decades
every summer tornadoes rip across the
American plane States by positioning
himself in the path of monster storms
Samaras can deploy equipment that
measures barometric pressure humidity
and wind speed you get out there and you
see some of these storms it’s better
than any video game that you ever see
because you’re watching mother nature at
work and all the associated dynamics
fantastic it’s absolutely fantastic but
this year Samaras and his team are
expanding their horizons they’re also
documenting two other potentially
dangerous phenomena storms lightning and
hail with a battery of new gadgets
but first they must find bad weather
because I think Missouri Valley kind of
puts his equidistance together target
for weeks on end their convoy Criss
crosses a section of the United States
known as Tornado Alley their vehicles
act with state-of-the-art technology
this is like Grand Central Station in
here we’ve got computers in here that
are connected on the internet gives me
data on the storm gives me radar data
I got obviously cameras in here I’ve got
communications equipment on a ham radio
operator so I report severe storms to
the National Weather Service directly
yeah it does
does this look pretty impressive huh
like in the looks of this they stop when
they catch up to bad weather find a
vantage point and wait to see what
develops that’s probably gonna go right
there maybe I say that and I’ll kill it
perhaps jinxed these clouds never
develop beyond a summer thunderstorm oh
nice the odds are against them getting
to the right place at the right time is
difficult only one in five storms they
encounter produces a tornado however
during this chase season they are also
angling for a hailstorm on top of the
lead car is a net for catching
hailstones and cameras for recording the
velocity of the strike and there’s more
this thing here is actually a sample of
an aircraft company’s wing of their new
aircraft and what we’re looking for is
impact effects of hail on it these
little blocks here are simply impact
sensors when a hail stone hits it like
that it actually measures the magnitude
of the hit hail causes billions of
dollars worth of damage each year
destroying crops vehicles and property
by measuring the speed and impact of
hailstones
Samaras hopes to discover ways to
predict storms or mitigate the damage
there’s hardly any data telling us what
actual velocity is hail stone
are when they fall because the hailstone
itself the shapes are sometimes all the
way from smooth to very jagged spikes on
them and we really don’t know your
average velocity and then there’s white
another destructive force of nature that
accompanies these killer storms it’s the
leading cause of weather-related death
and injury in the United States and
sometimes even a veteran like Samaras
can get too close
I felt the power I was electrified right
now CG is just hitting all around us we
are in definitely in the strike zone man
with lightning strikes just a few feet
away
Samaras moves the team a safety is the
safest place to be is right here in this
vehicle maybe not with microphone in my
lap lightning strikes in a flash far too
fast for the human eye or a camera to
fully comprehend his path so Samaras has
constructed an ultra high-powered camera
that can shoot more than 400 times
faster than those used to record movies
in Hollywood when he’s photographed a
strike
Tim slows down the imagery to 10,000
frames a second
then fingers of supercharged energy
streak down beating it upward discharge
from the earth the goal is to capture as
much detail as possible this year we’re
actually coming out into the field with
a camera that’s capable of 1.5 million
frames per second it’s all digital we
jittery it’s all custom-built we’re
trying to capture what we call the
return stroke I don’t want it to affect
the mission let’s go
Samaras is gathering such minut
information about mega storms with the
hopes we can better predict when and
where they will strike next right now is
just kind of a clear spot to kind of
look and watch this thing go by their
power to destroy is awesome as evidenced
when the crew pulls into Manhattan
Kansas on the heels of a tornado
cars have been tossed into the air more
than a dozen homes have been flattened
a dazed Ashley Wimsatt
surveys the damage to her family’s home
that was my my sister just had a baby
three weeks ago that was the baby’s room
on the left where the cars at the total
damage exceeds millions of dollars but
at least no one has been killed
so Samaras and his crew will continue
their research sometimes driving 25,000
miles in a single season they are
chasing danger
and whoops of making people safer
sponsored by National Geographic mission
programs taking science and exploration
into the new millennium
and a major storm is moving into the
region we call it freight train type
storms you you get yourself positioned
northeast of these storms and you just
catch them basically as they go by
catching storms is something Tim Samaras
has been doing for decades
every summer tornadoes rip across the
American plane States by positioning
himself in the path of monster storms
Samaras can deploy equipment that
measures barometric pressure humidity
and wind speed you get out there and you
see some of these storms it’s better
than any video game that you ever see
because you’re watching mother nature at
work and all the associated dynamics
fantastic it’s absolutely fantastic but
this year Samaras and his team are
expanding their horizons they’re also
documenting two other potentially
dangerous phenomena storms lightning and
hail with a battery of new gadgets
but first they must find bad weather
because I think Missouri Valley kind of
puts his equidistance together target
for weeks on end their convoy Criss
crosses a section of the United States
known as Tornado Alley their vehicles
act with state-of-the-art technology
this is like Grand Central Station in
here we’ve got computers in here that
are connected on the internet gives me
data on the storm gives me radar data
I got obviously cameras in here I’ve got
communications equipment on a ham radio
operator so I report severe storms to
the National Weather Service directly
yeah it does
does this look pretty impressive huh
like in the looks of this they stop when
they catch up to bad weather find a
vantage point and wait to see what
develops that’s probably gonna go right
there maybe I say that and I’ll kill it
perhaps jinxed these clouds never
develop beyond a summer thunderstorm oh
nice the odds are against them getting
to the right place at the right time is
difficult only one in five storms they
encounter produces a tornado however
during this chase season they are also
angling for a hailstorm on top of the
lead car is a net for catching
hailstones and cameras for recording the
velocity of the strike and there’s more
this thing here is actually a sample of
an aircraft company’s wing of their new
aircraft and what we’re looking for is
impact effects of hail on it these
little blocks here are simply impact
sensors when a hail stone hits it like
that it actually measures the magnitude
of the hit hail causes billions of
dollars worth of damage each year
destroying crops vehicles and property
by measuring the speed and impact of
hailstones
Samaras hopes to discover ways to
predict storms or mitigate the damage
there’s hardly any data telling us what
actual velocity is hail stone
are when they fall because the hailstone
itself the shapes are sometimes all the
way from smooth to very jagged spikes on
them and we really don’t know your
average velocity and then there’s white
another destructive force of nature that
accompanies these killer storms it’s the
leading cause of weather-related death
and injury in the United States and
sometimes even a veteran like Samaras
can get too close
I felt the power I was electrified right
now CG is just hitting all around us we
are in definitely in the strike zone man
with lightning strikes just a few feet
away
Samaras moves the team a safety is the
safest place to be is right here in this
vehicle maybe not with microphone in my
lap lightning strikes in a flash far too
fast for the human eye or a camera to
fully comprehend his path so Samaras has
constructed an ultra high-powered camera
that can shoot more than 400 times
faster than those used to record movies
in Hollywood when he’s photographed a
strike
Tim slows down the imagery to 10,000
frames a second
then fingers of supercharged energy
streak down beating it upward discharge
from the earth the goal is to capture as
much detail as possible this year we’re
actually coming out into the field with
a camera that’s capable of 1.5 million
frames per second it’s all digital we
jittery it’s all custom-built we’re
trying to capture what we call the
return stroke I don’t want it to affect
the mission let’s go
Samaras is gathering such minut
information about mega storms with the
hopes we can better predict when and
where they will strike next right now is
just kind of a clear spot to kind of
look and watch this thing go by their
power to destroy is awesome as evidenced
when the crew pulls into Manhattan
Kansas on the heels of a tornado
cars have been tossed into the air more
than a dozen homes have been flattened
a dazed Ashley Wimsatt
surveys the damage to her family’s home
that was my my sister just had a baby
three weeks ago that was the baby’s room
on the left where the cars at the total
damage exceeds millions of dollars but
at least no one has been killed
so Samaras and his crew will continue
their research sometimes driving 25,000
miles in a single season they are
chasing danger
and whoops of making people safer
sponsored by National Geographic mission
programs taking science and exploration
into the new millennium
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