Storm Chasers (TV series)

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Storm Chasers
Storm Chasers title logo.jpg
Season 4-5 title screen shot of Storm Chasers
Genre Documentary
Reality
Weather
Created by Sean Casey
Joshua Wurman
Reed Timmer
Tim Samaras
Tony Laubach
Carl Young
Matt Grzych
Brandon Ivey
Matt Hughes
Chris Chittick
Byron Turk
Charlie Corwin
Brian Nashel
Ronan Nagle
Jay Peterson
Starring Sean Casey
Marcus S Gutierrez (TIV Driver Medic)
Joshua Wurman
Reed Timmer
Tim Samaras
Tony Laubach
Carl Young
Matt Grzych
Brandon Ivey
Matt Hughes
Joel Taylor
Chris Chittick
Byron Turk
Opening theme"Blaze of Glory" by Bon Jovi (season 3–4)
ComposerDidier Rachou
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons5
No. of episodes36 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producersCharlie Corwin
Brian Nashel
Ronan Nagle
Jay Peterson
Production locationUnited States
Running time45 minutes
Production companyOriginal Media
Original release
Network Discovery Channel
ReleaseOctober 17, 2007 (2007-10-17) 
November 10, 2011 (2011-11-10)
Related

Storm Chasers is an American documentary reality television series that premiered on October 17, 2007, on the Discovery Channel. Produced by Original Media, the program follows several teams of storm chasers as they attempt to intercept tornadoes in Tornado Alley in the United States. The show was canceled at the end of its 5th season by Discovery Communications on January 21, 2012.

Contents

Overview

An early version of the Tornado Intercept Vehicle (TIV 1). Tornado intercept vehicle.jpg
An early version of the Tornado Intercept Vehicle (TIV 1).
The SRV "Dominator", featured in the Discovery Channel series, Storm Chasers. SRV Dominator crop.jpg
The SRV "Dominator", featured in the Discovery Channel series, Storm Chasers.

Storm Chasers was filmed each year in the central United States (an area known as Tornado Alley due to the frequency and severity of tornadoes occurring there) primarily during late spring and early summer, the time of the most frequent tornado activity (though some episodes of recent seasons have also been filmed in the lesser-known Dixie Alley in the southeastern U.S.). Several teams of storm chasers appear in the series. During the 2007 and 2008 seasons Dr. Joshua Wurman, a renowned atmospheric scientist and creator of the Doppler On Wheels (DOW), teamed with documentary IMAX filmmaker Sean Casey. Wurman's goal is to collect tornado data in order to improve warnings systems, while Casey's goal is to film footage inside a tornado using his armored Tornado Intercept Vehicle (TIV).

The TIV crew was led by Casey and Marcus Gutierrez, Driver and rescue Medic who took over Ronan's job as driver of the series, and Byron Turk, navigator and a shooter/producer for the show. The TIV was outfitted with weather instruments which collect data from approximately 12 feet above ground that, when combined with the DOW radar imagery and the probe data, can help to give Josh a more complete picture of a tornado's structure. Casey produced/directed his second IMAX feature about tornadoes. The first, Forces of Nature, was released in 2003 with a third of the film dedicated to tornadoes, the other two thirds were dedicated to volcanoes and earthquakes. Ronan is an executive producer on the film entitled, Tornado Alley, with the release on March 18, 2011. [1]

Beginning in 2008, the program also began following the team from the website TornadoVideos.Net (TVN) led by meteorology Ph.D. candidate Reed Timmer, Joel Taylor (Driver/Meteorologist) and Chris Chittick (Photographer/Probe Technician). The goal of Reed's small but highly mobile team is to capture "extreme video" as well as scientific data from tornadoes. Timmer's team is known as "Team Dominator" in the show, referring to the name of their own armored chase vehicle, the SRV Dominator. This new season also brought a change to Casey's team, replacing the TIV with the TIV2. The vehicle suffered constant chronic mechanical problems, and was sent for re-modification early in the season, and was replaced with the original TIV. TIV2 did not return from repairs until the middle of the third season.

During the 2009 season, the series also documented the TWISTEX team, led by engineer and veteran storm chaser Tim Samaras, who was killed in 2013 while storm-chasing in El Reno, Oklahoma along with his son Paul and fellow storm-chaser Carl Young. The main purpose of the TWISTEX team is to deploy their "turtle" probes into the path of tornadoes and deploy mesonet vehicles around the twister. Carl Young helps pilot the Probe vehicle while Tony Laubach drives one of the mesonet vehicles, M3. Another addition to Casey's team was the addition of the Doghouse, driven by meteorologists and storm chasers Matt Hughes (died 2010) and Brandon Ivey, who chased as part of the TIV team. The original Scout, PROBE, TWISTEX, and TVN vehicles all carry probes that are designed to be placed in the projected path of tornadoes to collect data and film footage from the lowest 100 feet of the tornado. [ citation needed ]

Before the beginning of the 2009 season, Josh Wurman become one of the leaders of Vortex 2, a government sponsored tornado research program, which led to massive cast changes. The DOW, Scout, Probe vehicles, along with all personnel except Casey, Turk and Neagle leaving the show's main cast. Vortex 2, Josh Wurman and some of the other cast reappeared in several episodes across Seasons 3 and 4.

Dedications

The episode titled "Dedication" which debuted on November 3, 2010, begins and ends with a dedication to Wichita native Matt Hughes, who had attempted suicide on May 14, 2010 and died twelve days later at age thirty in Valley Center, Kansas. [2] [3] Matt was part of the TIV team, first in the Doghouse and then, in 2010, inside the TIV under Casey's direction. Casey's completed IMAX film Tornado Alley (opened in March 2011) is dedicated to Hughes. The 2010 season is dedicated to Yazoo City, Mississippi as TornadoVideos.Net chased the mile-wide tornado and were among the first people on the scene to help.

Episodes

SeasonEpisodesSeason premiereSeason finale
1 4October 17, 2007November 7, 2007
2 8October 19, 2008December 7, 2008
3 8October 18, 2009November 29, 2009
4 8October 13, 2010December 1, 2010
5 8September 25, 2011November 10, 2011

DOW and Scout were headed by Dr. Wurman in seasons one and two. Wurman and the DOW made only sporadic appearances in seasons three and four, as they had joined the VORTEX2 project, which is not generally followed by Storm Chasers cameras. In season four, Dr. Wurman was also shown to be involved in the funding of Casey's IMAX film, when he addressed Casey about a video showing reckless driving by TIV2. The Scout team of Danny Cheresnick and Aaron Ruppert appeared in the first two seasons as part of the DOW team, but were featured in only one episode in season three. [ citation needed ]

Chasing groups Season 1 Season 2 Season 3 Season 4 Season 5
Tornado Intercept Vehicle Main
Doppler on Wheels Main Recurring Does not appear
TornadoVideos.Net Cameo Main
TWISTEX Does not appear Main

Cancellation

On January 21, 2012, Tim Samaras and Sean Casey confirmed on their Facebook pages that Storm Chasers was cancelled by Discovery Communications. [4] Tim Samaras was reportedly relieved when the show was cancelled as he thought it focused more on interpersonal drama than on the storms themselves. [5]

Broadcast

Repeats of the series are currently airing on the digital broadcast network Quest. Episodes of all 5 seasons are also available on YouTube and the first 4 seasons are available on Max.

After the series

Timmer and others continued a web series, Tornado Chasers , funded by Kickstarter campaigns.

On May 31, 2013, three members of the TWISTEX team, Tim Samaras, his twenty-four-year-old son Paul Samaras, and California native Carl Young (aged 45), lost their lives while chasing an EF3 tornado in El Reno, Oklahoma. [6] The three were featured in a Storm Chasers special, "Mile Wide Tornado: Oklahoma Disaster", aired on The Discovery Channel on June 5, 2013. [7] They were also featured in The Weather Channel's television special "Dangerous Day Ahead" which aired a month later.

On February 4, 2016, Herbert Stein (former driver of the Doppler on Wheels) died at age 57 after a short battle with pancreatic and liver cancer. [8]

On January 23, 2018, former Storm Chasers member Joel Taylor died of a drug overdose at age 38 on a cruise ship. [9]

In other media

Storm Chasers Sean Casey and Reed Timmer appeared on an episode of the MythBusters . They had the TIV 2 and the Dominator tested by MythBusters Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman to see if the vehicles could withstand wind speeds of 200 to 250 mph using a high powered jet engine. (See Storm Chasing Myths.)

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Storm chasing</span> Pursuit of any severe weather condition

Storm chasing is broadly defined as the deliberate pursuit of any severe weather phenomenon, regardless of motive, but most commonly for curiosity, adventure, scientific investigation, or for news or media coverage. A person who chases storms is known as a storm chaser or simply a chaser.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike Bettes</span> American Television Meteoroligist

Michael Bettes is an American television meteorologist and storm chaser who works for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, Georgia. He was a co-host of AMHQ: America's Morning Headquarters. He hosts Weather Underground TV. Bettes has been an on-camera meteorologist for TWC since 2003, and is also an occasional fill-in weather anchor on The Today Show.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timothy P. Marshall</span> American structural and forensic engineer

Timothy Patrick Marshall is an American structural and forensic engineer as well as meteorologist, concentrating on damage analysis, particularly that from wind and other weather phenomena. He is also a pioneering storm chaser and was editor of Storm Track magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tornado Intercept Vehicle</span> Vehicle used to film a tornado

The Tornado Intercept Vehicle 1 and Tornado Intercept Vehicle 2 are vehicles used to film with an IMAX camera from very close to or within a tornado. They were designed by film director Sean Casey. Both TIVs have "intercepted" numerous tornadoes, including the June 12, 2005, Jayton, Texas tornado, the June 5, 2009, Goshen County, Wyoming tornado, and the strongest intercept, made by TIV 2, the May 27, 2013, Lebanon, Kansas tornado.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doppler on Wheels</span> Fleet of X-band radar trucks maintained by the Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR)

Doppler on Wheels is a fleet of X-band and C-band radar mobile and quickly-deployable truck-borne radars which are the core instrumentation of the Flexible Array of Radars and Mesonets affiliated with the University of Illinois and led by Joshua Wurman, with the funding partially provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The DOW fleet and its associated Mobile Mesonets and deployable weather stations Doppler on Wheels (DOW) has been deploying in hazardous/challenging weather, driving into the eye of the storm to gather scientific data about wind, rain and snow that are missed by stationary radar systems. They are part of the NSF's "Community Instruments and Facilities" (CIF) program.

Tornado Glory is an American documentary film that was released in 2006 by PBS. Produced by Angry Sky Entertainment, the program follows storm chasers Reed Timmer and Joel Taylor through Tornado Alley during the 2003 storm season. The film was produced and directed by Ken Cole.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joshua Wurman</span> American meteorologist

Joshua Michael Aaron Ryder Wurman is an American atmospheric scientist and inventor noted for tornado, tropical cyclone, and weather radar research, the invention of DOW and bistatic radar multiple-Doppler networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VORTEX projects</span> Field experiments that study tornadoes

The Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment are field experiments that study tornadoes. VORTEX1 was the first time scientists completely researched the entire evolution of a tornado with an array of instrumentation, enabling a greater understanding of the processes involved with tornadogenesis. A violent tornado near Union City, Oklahoma was documented in its entirety by chasers of the Tornado Intercept Project (TIP) in 1973. Their visual observations led to advancement in understanding of tornado structure and life cycles.

Tony Laubach is an American storm chaser and meteorologist. He has participated in several field research projects and is one of the surviving members of TWISTEX. He has been contracted as a severe weather photojournalist for various major television networks, and has starred in several television shows, including Seasons 3 through 5 of Storm Chasers on the Discovery Channel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TWISTEX</span> Tornado research experiment

TWISTEX was a tornado research experiment that was founded and led by Tim Samaras of Bennett, Colorado, US, that ended in the deaths of three researchers in the 2013 El Reno tornado. The experiment announced in 2015 that there were some plans for future operations, but no additional information has been announced since.

<i>Forces of Nature</i> (2004 film) 2004 documentary film by Sean Casey

Forces of Nature is an 2004 American IMAX 3D documentary film about strong forces that shape the Earth's surface. It is produced by the National Geographic Society, and includes coverage of

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reed Timmer</span> American meteorologist and storm chaser

Dr. Reed Timmer is an American meteorologist and storm chaser. He is known for starring in the Discovery Channel reality television series Storm Chasers, as well as in the documentary film Tornado Glory and in the series Tornado Chasers. He also worked with Mike Theiss in the reality television series Storms Rising on Disney+.

Howard Bruce Bluestein is a research meteorologist known for his mesoscale meteorology, severe weather, and radar research. He is a major participant in the VORTEX projects. A native of the Boston area, Dr. Bluestein received his Ph.D. in 1976 from MIT. He has been a professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma (OU) since 1976.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sean Casey (filmmaker)</span> American IMAX filmmaker and storm chaser

Sean Cameron Casey is an American IMAX filmmaker and storm chaser who appeared in the Discovery Channel reality television series Storm Chasers. Casey created an IMAX film called Tornado Alley about chasing tornadoes and had to build the Tornado Intercept Vehicle (TIV) and the Tornado Intercept Vehicle 2 (TIV2) to film inside a tornado. Tornado Alley was released worldwide on March 18, 2011. Casey has been named one of the 50 best minds of 2008 by Discover Magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SRV Dominator</span> Series of vehicles designed to intercept tornados

The SRV Dominator is the name given to a series of vehicles used for Reed Timmer, as featured on the Discovery Channel series Storm Chasers. In April 2013, Timmer, designer and operator of all three Dominator vehicles, joined KFOR-TV's 4WARN Storm Team, all three vehicles collectively referred to by the station as "Dominator 4".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tornado outbreak of May 26–31, 2013</span> Tornado outbreak in the United States

A prolonged and widespread tornado outbreak sequence affected a large portion of the United States in late-May 2013 and early-June 2013. The outbreak was the result of a slow-moving but powerful storm system that produced several strong tornadoes across the Great Plains states, especially in Kansas and Oklahoma. Other strong tornadoes caused severe damage in Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, and Michigan. The outbreak extended as far east as Upstate New York. 27 fatalities were reported in total, with nine resulting from tornadoes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tim Samaras</span> American engineer and storm chaser

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. He died in the 2013 El Reno tornado.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2013 El Reno tornado</span> Widest and second-strongest tornado ever recorded

During the early evening of Friday, May 31, 2013, an extremely large and powerful tornado occurred over rural areas of Central Oklahoma. This rain-wrapped, multiple-vortex tornado was the widest tornado ever recorded and was part of a larger weather system that produced dozens of tornadoes over the preceding days. The tornado initially touched down at 6:03 p.m. Central Daylight Time (2303 UTC) about 8.3 miles (13.4 km) west-southwest of El Reno, rapidly growing in size and becoming more violent as it tracked through central portions of Canadian County. Remaining over mostly open terrain, the tornado did not impact many structures; however, measurements from mobile weather radars revealed extreme winds up to 135.0 m/s within the vortex. These are among the highest observed wind speeds on Earth, just slightly lower than the wind speeds of the 1999 Bridge Creek–Moore tornado. As it crossed U.S. 81, it had grown to a record-breaking width of 2.6 miles (4.2 km), beating the previous width record set in 2004. Turning northeastward, the tornado soon weakened. Upon crossing Interstate 40, the tornado dissipated around 6:43 p.m. CDT (2343 UTC), after tracking for 16.2 miles (26.1 km), it avoided affecting the more densely populated areas near and within the Oklahoma City metropolitan area.

<i>Tornado Chasers</i> (TV series) American TV series or program

Tornado Chasers is an American documentary series that premiered on September 19, 2012, on TVNweather.com. The program follows Reed Timmer and his team of storm chasers as they attempt to intercept tornadoes in Tornado Alley in the United States and Canada. Season 2, funded largely through a successful Kickstarter campaign, commenced on September 30, 2013. The series is a two-time Webby Award Honoree, once for Best Documentary Series in 2013, and again for Best Editing in 2014.

References

  1. "Tornado Alley". tornadoalleymovie.com. Retrieved September 11, 2019.
  2. Blaser, Aaron (June 7, 2010). "R.I.P. Matt". Archived from the original on November 7, 2010. Retrieved November 5, 2010.
  3. Grossberg, Josh (November 4, 2010). "Storm Chasers Star Commits Suicide". E! News . Retrieved November 5, 2010.
  4. "Tim Samaras Confirms Storm Chasers Canceled". January 24, 2012. Retrieved April 9, 2012.
  5. Draper, Robert (November 2013). "The Last Chase". National Geographic. Archived from the original on October 15, 2013.
  6. "Three storm chasers killed in Oklahoma". CNN. 2013-06-02. Retrieved 2013-06-02.
  7. The Hollywood Reporter: "Discovery Airing Tribute to 'Stormchasers' Stars Killed in Oklahoma Tornado", June 3, 2013
  8. "HERBERT STEIN Obituary - Elyria, OH | The Plain Dealer" . Retrieved September 11, 2019.
  9. Joyce, Kathleen (January 24, 2018). "'Storm Chasers' star Joel Taylor ..." (Press release). online: Fox News . Retrieved January 24, 2018.
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