Published June 2, 2013 12:00AM
Veteran storm chaser Tim Samaras along with his 23-year-old son Paul and longtime chase partner and friend Carl Young were caught and killed by a large tornado that tore through El Reno, Oklahoma, Friday.
Jim Samaras, Tim’s brother, announced the death of the storm chaser on Facebook Sunday, saying all three died “doing what they loved.”
Samaras was one of the country’s premier storm chasers, who engineered probes to capture information at the base of tornadoes. In order to collect data, Samaras and his team chased storms, placing probes directly in the twister’s path. He also founded TWISTEX (Tactical Weather Instrumental Sampling in Tornadoes EXperiment) to advance the warning available to the public.
“This has really shaken up everyone in the storm chasing community, we knew this day would happen someday, but nobody would imagine that it would happen to Tim,” severe storms photojournalist Doug Kiesling told CNN. “Tim was one of the safest people to go out there.”
