The Man Who Caught the Storm: The Life of Legendary Tornado Chaser Tim Samaras

In this insightful biography, journalist Hargrove charts the interests and achievements of tornado chaser Tim Samaras, who died in a tornado with his 24-year-old son in 2013. Readers familiar with Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers will be familiar with Samaras, and with help from Samaras’s family, friends, and colleagues, Hargrove paints a complete picture of the engineer while providing lessons on the science behind tornadoes—“one of the most awesome expressions of force in the natural world.” As a boy in 1960s Colorado, Samaras was fascinated with The Wizard of Oz: “He couldn’t take his eyes off the tornado as it roped over the fields toward Dorothy and Toto.” Samaras would grow up to track tornados alongside older, more practiced scientists and meteorologists. Eventually, he chased tornadoes throughout the Midwest and Southwest. Hargrove describes the camaraderie that storm chasers can build over time, the “intimate proximity” that develops when “chasing across states with the same group in the same vehicle.” Hargrove not only skillfully presents Samaras’s life story but also the collective story of a storm-chasing subculture. (Apr.)