Exploration
When nature's raw power devastates communities in tornado strikes, Tim Marshall is often the first on the scene to rifle through the rubble. Find out what drives him to do so.
Nature's fury sends tornadoes ripping through America's Midwest every spring and early summer. The adrenaline buzz of a tornado draws hundreds of storm chasers into the region, most just desperate to get close to this incredible phenomenon, and film it to sell to news channels or just boost their social media status.
The devastation can be immense however, and one storm chaser in particular, Tim Marshall, is as interested in arriving after the storm as he is in chasing it. In over 40 years of chasing and damage surveying, Marshall has seen it all, and he's also had a few lucky escapes himself.
What first got you interested in Tornadoes?
I've always been interested in destruction. When I was a kid, I would put firecrackers in model cars and run away. One day my dad came home with a load of M80s, and that was fun. Then, when I was 10-years-old, my town was hit by a ferocious tornado. It was April 21, 1967. A mobile home park was destroyed, and it was an absolute mess. It killed 33 people, including some I knew. My mom took us out to see the devastation three days later, and from that point on I became fascinated by tornadoes.
How did you get into chasing?
I bought some weather equipment after the tornado near my home, and I learned how to do my own forecasting. After a few years I got my first chase vehicle, a Chevy Camaro, and we had a big tornado in Wichita Falls. It was incredible, and I knew from then on I wanted to study the damage these things do.
How long have you been doing this?
It's been over 40 years now. I'm based around the Dallas, Texas area, but I've travelled almost 804,000km chasing down tornadoes. Over the years I've seen more than 200 tornadoes, mostly in the Texas pan handle, and around Wichita, Oklahoma and Colorado.
You must have been in some close calls. Have you ever been hit?
I've not been totally hit yet, but I've been close enough to have debris falling around me, and that tells you that you're too close. I've had several close calls in tornadoes, and I'm not really too proud of them, because as a storm chaser you try to avoid getting hit. Sometimes you get into trouble, though.
Sometimes a road is closed or appears on the map, but just isn't there. I've got stuck in the mud twice with tornadoes coming at me, and that wasn't fun. Fortunately, I got pulled out both times, and the tornadoes missed me. We put ourselves in the safest position possible, but you never know.
So, how close have you got?
I saw a tornado destroy a farm right in front of me, and had another close escape when some power transformers blew right next to me, and a huge metal tank was ripped up and being tossed around outside. Fortunately, it didn't hit me.
I was hit by a hail core once, and the car was just beaten to a pulp by three-inch hail. It felt like being in a garbage can with 50 people outside with baseball bats hitting you. That was pretty scary.
Another time, we had a tornado plucking trees out of the ground, root and all, and spinning them around as it came towards us. They could have gone anywhere.
I have been close at night, too, and that's scary because you don't know where the tornado is. We got out of the vehicle, because we thought we were going to get blown away if we stayed in it. I had to climb under a bridge, and the tornado barely missed me.
Do you ever fear for your life?
Sure. We all fear getting hit by tornadoes. We don't want to become a victim, and we don’t want to intercept one at ground zero, we just want to see it and live to chase another day.
Why do you do this?
I chase for the beauty of the sky, the wide-open spaces, the open road, and to admire past lives that were here in the frontier many years ago. Also the thrill of the hunt, hunting it down – that's real excitement.
Do you just chase for fun, then?
No. One of the things I do is to assess the damage done by tornadoes, and it's incredible to see what they can do. It sends chills down my spine to see this kind of destruction, and just walk the path, being there knowing that here I am, walking in calm weather, but at a different point in time it was a very violent and horrible place.
What sort of things do you find?
Oh, we find lots of interesting things. My first damage survey was in 1980. There was a massive tornado that went through a place called Grand Island, and we went in the day after. We found a motel there that had a bunch of concrete planks making up the roof. They were ripped off and thrown up to 160m away, where they speared, like an arrow, through houses and semi-trailer trucks. It was incredible.
One of the biggest devastations I ever saw was in Jarrell, Texas, in 1997. It was a slow moving tornado, moving only at about 14kph, and it was about 1.2km wide, so it was over a given house for about three minutes. It ground up the houses, dug up the ground, and it killed a lot of people.
It's all part of the puzzle. We need better understanding of tornadoes. We need to know what makes them form, what makes them big or small, how we can spot them and warn people earlier, and develop buildings that offer better protection. That's what it's all about.
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