To Study Tornados, Bring an Apocalypse-Proof Truck. And Rocket Launchers

Reed Timmer has been chasing storms for much than 2 decades, since helium intercepted his archetypal tornado successful bluish Oklahoma arsenic an undergrad majoring successful meteorology. During that time, Timmer, who typically logs much than 50,000 miles connected the roadworthy each year, has intercepted countless tornadoes, each 1 helping to further his extreme-weather knowledge. “We inactive don’t wholly cognize what happens wrong a tornado,” says Edgar ONeal, a upwind writer who is Timmer’s pursuit partner.

Enter the Dominator. This is the 3rd iteration of Timmer’s custom-built tornado mobile, which helium initially rolled retired successful the precocious 2000s. The existent Dominator has the chassis of an F350 and weighs 10,000 pounds, enabling it to withstand the debris, gorilla hail, and 150-mph winds that travel the astir almighty of storms. According to Timmer, his “holy grail” is to thrust the Dominator to wrong a quarter-mile of a twister, past sprout a rocket loaded with sensors straight into the bosom of the tornado. Timmer has accomplished this once: In May 2019, the rocket tracked the vortex’s unit driblet and frigid aerial temperature. His team’s anticipation successful the coming twelvemonth is to motorboat dozens of rockets astatine the aforesaid clip into the swirling updraft of a twister’s “inflow notch.” But adjacent if each those rockets fail, the Dominator is afloat of its ain sensors to seizure invaluable technological data. “That’s the full point,” says ONeal. “You tin motorboat probes into a tornado, oregon you tin beryllium the probe, and that’s the Dominator."