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Death of a Storm Chaser
Photograph by Carsten Peter, National Geographic
Storm chaser Tim Samaras died Friday doing the work that made him so well-known: following tornadoes. Samaras was killed along with his son Paul and storm chaser Carl Young in Friday's tornado in El Reno, Oklahoma.
An engineer by training, Samaras was known for devising instruments that offered the first views inside live tornadoes. "We still don't know why some thunderstorms create tornadoes while others don't," he told National Geographic last month. "We're trying to collect as many observations as possible, both from outside and from the inside."
Published June 2, 2013
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Rushing Towards Dying Storm
Photograph by Carsten Peter, National Geographic
Guided by the laptop weather map reflected in his window, Tim Samaras rushes to catch up to a dying thunderstorm. He wanted to be the first to photograph the split-second event that triggers a lightning strike.
Published June 2, 2013
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Cloud-to-Ground Lightning Strike
Photograph by Carsten Peter, National Geographic
A cloud-to-ground lightning strike severs the sky near Los Lunas, New Mexico. Samaras and his crew chased the slow-moving storm cell until they ran out of road, then watched as it moved on. New Mexico's sparse road system makes lightning chasing difficult. Far easier to navigate are the tight grids of farm roads crisscrossing the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles.
Published June 2, 2013
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A Tornado Up Close
Photograph by Tim Samaras
This 2005 image from one of Samaras's cameras shows a two-foot-long (one-meter-long) branch flying past the camera along with other debris as it is sucked into the tornado. A half-inch thick, bulletproof, plastic cover protects the camera lens, but the cover takes a beating. "They're pretty scoured once the tornado passes," Samaras said at the time.
Published June 2, 2013
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Kahuna Camera
Photograph by Carsten Peter, National Geographic
As he awaited a wave of thunderstorms to form along Colorado's Front Range eight years ago, Samaras readied the 1,600-pound camera he called the Kahuna.
Published June 2, 2013
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Waiting for Lightning
Photograph by Carsten Peter, National Geographic
Samaras aiming his camera to capture lightning striking.
Published June 2, 2013
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End of the Rainbow
Photograph by Carsten Peter
Pulling into Clayton, New Mexico, Samaras came to the end of a 75-mile chase in the mid-2000s. “Whenever you see the rainbow, it's game over,” he said at the time. By sunset on that day another storm had erupted 50 miles to the south, and the crew was on the road until 1 a.m.
Published June 2, 2013
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