Looks like Tim’s brother Jim just postedto confirm the rumor.
Stunned, shocked, and saddened today. Of all the people that would have not just been caught into but killed by a tornado, it’s hard to fathom that Tim Samaras would have been one of them. Perhaps one of the most safety-minded of any chaser in the country, Samaras instinctively knew storms, knew tornadoes, and had a great penchant for predicting what they would and probably wouldn’t do. He was a thoughtful chaser and engineer first and foremost: everything he did was predicated towards understanding violent nature and devising means of withstanding their onslaught. He wasn’t brash or reckless, he didn’t chase with an ego, and he didn’t do tours and sell himself like a prostitute. But not only did he work to make people safer generally, he worked tirelessly to help the chaser community as well. The impact of this will be felt for a long time to come, in many, many ways.
— Alan
This was their SUV (well might have been a pickup):
— Alan
In some positive news, on the same day of this tragedy Mike Hollingshead, who has taken some of the most virally spread images of storms that are attributed to other things (like hurricanes) on the net, captured this amazing shot:
What it shows are some fairly far-away thunderstorms, aurora, and a red sprite. Sprites are incredibly rare phenomena (well, according to some, perhaps not so rare) that occur above far above the tops of certain thunderstorms after positively-charged lightning strikes occur. This one is quite literally hundreds of miles away, and to top it all off, is (according to researchers) perhaps only the second time a sprite and aurora have been captured in color in the same photo (and that was just a week earlier). And this was much better resolution, and higher ISO. A great, chance find.
— Alan
Blech. Prague is in a state of emergency do to heavy rainfall causing the Vltava to look like it’s going to flood.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/02/czech-floods-idUSL5N0EE0S820130602
This doesn’t affect me too much as I live on a hill and am unlikely to be flooded short of a biblical disaster, however, they’ve also shut most of the subways system down which I and the majority of the city use to get to work. After a miserable “alternative commute” (why seniors would decide to go out in the pouring rain in the middle of rush hour when they have to know that public transit severely will be over-crowded is beyond me. I’m assuming just to make the trip that much sweeter) i got to work after about an hour longer than it normally takes.
Then my office, which is nowhere near the river, loses its power and I sit around for a couple of hours before the building’s officials decide that situation is going to take ten hours to fix and we get sent home. Another lame commute home and as it’s now 2 PM, I hate to say that my enthusiasm for working from home for the rest of the day has really waned :)
I’m going to try to pop up to a major hill I live on and see if there is anything to see once I’m done.
And they said the last flood was a once in 500 years event!
It is a bit odd as I’m from Coastal BC and it rains like this for days at a time, normally without major floods. I guess this part of the world just isn’t really built to have that much rain at once. What a normally lucky people!
Intense video from stormchasers in Oklahoma during the May 31st storms. These guys survived. Their vehicle didn’t.
The El Reno tornado has now been categorized as an EF-5 and after some study the NWS has determined it was the widest tornado damage path they had ever seen, at 2.6 miles width:
— Alan
JMR
1768
Video from inside the Tornado Intercept Vehicle 2.
Holy crap!
Well this was unexpected. The SPC has issued a HIGH risk threat for the upper Ohio river valley region today, focusing on northern Illinois and Ohio. I think this might be the first High risk issued this year or at least, this spring. I think.
A SIGNIFICANT SEVERE WEATHER OUTBREAK APPEARS INCREASINGLY LIKELY
ACROSS PORTIONS OF THE UPPER MIDWEST/LOWER GREAT LAKES FROM THIS
AFTERNOON THROUGH THIS EVENING. INTENSE STORM DEVELOPMENT IN A VERY
UNSTABLE AIRMASS…COINCIDENT WITH A COMPACT AND INTENSIFYING
SURFACE LOW SHOULD RESULT IN NUMEROUS DAMAGING WIND EVENTS AS WELL
AS SCATTERED…POSSIBLY STRONG TORNADOES.
…
EXPECT
POTENTIALLY EXPLOSIVE STORM DEVELOPMENT TO OCCUR IN THE PRESENCE OF
MODEST TO LOCALLY STRONG STORM-RELATIVELY HELICITY /SRH/. ANY
CONVECTION INITIATING NEAR THE SURFACE LOW AND FRONT WILL QUICKLY
ACQUIRE SUPERCELL CHARACTERISTICS GIVEN DEGREE OF EFFECTIVE VERTICAL
SHEAR OF 35-55KT. POTENTIALLY STRONG TORNADO THREAT MAY BE MAXIMIZED
DURING THIS EARLY DEVELOPMENT PHASE /21Z-00Z/ NEAR THE LOW AND FRONT
WHILE STORMS REMAIN DISCRETE AMIDST HIGH INSTABILITY AND EFFECTIVE
SRH IN EXCESS OF 200 M2/S2.
So… those in the Chicago-Indianapolis-Toledo triangle really need to watch out today.
— Alan
ddtibbs
1770
They’re calling for 50-80 MPH sustained winds tonight in Columbus. Thankfully the wind will be out of the NW, so the big tree in my back yard will fall away from the house if it comes down. Probably not sleeping well tonight.
Houngan
1771
I find this scarier since the weather is beautiful right now and the radar looks clear for the entire country. Whatever is coming will have to be moving quickly.
Houngan you might be okay, depending. Nothing particular on the radar aside from a few showers at the moment west of Chicago.
— Alan
Meanwhile bits of Colorado is on fire, with high temps east of the Rockies (in the 100s already) coupled with a somewhat dry winter in the mountains a lot of people were going to be on pins and needles this year for wildfire. Quite a few were burning all around yesterday, including one in the Royal Gorge:
And the Black Forest fire north of Colorado Springs:
— Alan
Houngan
1774
I’m sure I’ll be fine, Louisville was only on the edge in the earlier maps and the predicted track has moved well north. But man, Chicago is centered in that sucker.
Particularly Dangerous Situation (PDS) Tornado Watch issued for a wide area encompassing the Iowa-Illinois-Wisconsin border. Storms are starting to fire and look like they’re moving directly east.
DISCUSSION…POTENTIALLY EXPLOSIVE THUNDERSTORM DEVELOPMENT IS
POSSIBLE OVER THE NEXT FEW HOURS AS GRADUALLY DEEPENING SURFACE LOW
TRACKS EAST ALONG A FRONTAL ZONE SITUATED FROM NORTHEAST IOWA
EASTWARD ALONG THE WI/IL BORDER TO LAKE MICHIGAN. A VOLATILE WARM
AND VERY MOIST AIRMASS SHOULD FUEL INTENSE THUNDERSTORM UPDRAFTS
ACROSS THESE AREAS WHERE MID LEVEL FLOW IN EXCESS AROUND 50KT
SUPPORTS UPDRAFT PERSISTENCE AND ORGANIZATION. A NUMBER OF
SUPERCELLS ARE EXPECTED PRIOR TO A CONSOLIDATION OF STORMS INTO A
LARGE MCS TOWARD EVENING. LOW LEVEL SHEAR/HELICITY NEAR THE SURFACE
LOW AND ALONG THE FRONT WILL SUPPORT SOME TORNADOES WITH ANY
DISCRETE CELLS. A COUPLE STRONG TORNADOES SEEM POSSIBLE WITHIN THIS
ENVIRONMENT OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL HOURS IN ADDITION TO VERY LARGE
HAIL AND LOCALIZED DOWNDRAFT/DAMAGING WIND THREATS.
— Alan
This is some damn fine video of a massive thunderstorm supercell. Awesome to watch; also, very glad it stays the hell away from me.
Tornado spawned off of the east side of Denver International Airport today; from all reports the storm-shelter warnings that suddenly popped in the terminal were done really well and there was no panic. (Though honestly as the tornado was on the east side of the airport property the chance of the terminal getting hit by that particular cell was pretty much nil.)
— Alan
edit: Skip Talbot put together another one of his time-lapse videos of the May 31 chase, which is interesting for what he did (or didn’t do); instead of turning north on 81 to obliquely pass ahead of the storm (that was moving generally SE at the time), he kept moving directly east what they thought would at least be somewhat in the same direction, but instead they wound up stopping as the cell turned hard left and instead angled northeast towards the interstate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4EhfkcH5t0
A few months earlier Talbot encountered both Tim Samaras out in Burlington where he was joined up with Sean Casey’s TIV2 so it’s great to see him chew the fat and just have a normal conversation with a group of early-season chasers. That’s pretty much how Samaras was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Fuv5GZNOj0
Here’s another good pic from DIA:
— Alan
RichVR
1779
Well. Now we know what God’s asshole looks like. And it ain’t Billy Graham.
Who’s up for some sun this weekend?
(116 is the standing June record)
