If you are in the U.S. you probably have heard that the fatalities in the most recent round of tornadoes in Oklahoma included three stormchasers: Tim Samaras, his son Paul, and chase partner of 25 years Carl Young. I mentioned Tim Samaras on PDML just a week ago, when he saw twin tornadoes just 4 miles north of my position in Lebanon, Kansas on Memorial Day.
Tim led Team Twistex, which engaged in *real* scientific research and was not simply (like me) a recreational chaser. He was not some yahoo, who took risks just to get hits on YouTube or his face on television interviews (although he was highly sought after for his expertise). In the wake of the Twistex disaster, a thread appeared on Metafilter about it. I saw it late, but posted a comment to answer a question someone had posted (about how much there is to fear from a tornado if you are in a vehicle). After that, I received a message from a MeFi moderator asking if they could use one of my images, as they were making a "Best of Metafilter" post about the Samaras thread. I told them I would be honored. Well that post showed up this morning, and uses a former PESO image. It also uses part of my comment as the pull quote, and links to both my full comment and the full thread. I hope you find it interesting and informative, should you care to read it. Stormchasers feel a sort of familial kinship to one another, so the loss of any one of them would be felt to some degree, but to lose someone of the caliber of Tim Samaras and his crew is not just a loss to the family of stormchasers; It is a real loss for tornado (and lightning) research. http://bestof.metafilter.com/2013/06/the-fierce-power-of-tornadoes -- "Photography is a Bastard left by Science on the Doorstep of Art" - Peter Galassi -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
