Storm Chasers

Speaker 1 This episode of the Citation Needed podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game?

Speaker 1 Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at progressive.com.

Speaker 1 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, price and coverage match limited by state law, not available in all states.

Speaker 3 This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace.

Speaker 4 Last year, I went through many different life changes. I needed to take a pause and examine how I was feeling in the inside to better show up for the ones who need me to be my best version of myself.

Speaker 3 When you're navigating life's changes, Talkspace can help.

Speaker 3 Talkspace is the number one rated online therapy, bringing you professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatry providers that you can access anytime, anywhere.

Speaker 4 Living a busy life, navigating a long-distance relationship, becoming a first-step father, Talkspace made all of those journeys possible. I could speak with my therapist in the office.

Speaker 4 I could speak to my therapist in the comfort of my home.

Speaker 5 I was never alone.

Speaker 3 Talkspace works with most major insurers, and most insured members have a $0 copay. No insurance, no problem.
Now get $80 off your first month with promo code Space80 when you go to TalkSpace.com.

Speaker 3 Match with a licensed therapist today at TalkSpace.com. Save $80 with code space80 at talkspace.com.

Speaker 6 Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now.

Speaker 6 I'm Noah. I'm going to be leading this expedition, but I'll need some assistance.
First up, the Earth, Earth, Wind, and Fire of the podcast, Tom, Cecil, and Heath.

Speaker 7 Makes sense. I do have a natural funk about me.

Speaker 1 Nice. These guys are so jealous that I am wind.

Speaker 2 So jealous. I don't know.
I'm so mad that you're wind.

Speaker 2 Are you Earth or are you fire?

Speaker 7 I think I'm Earth.

Speaker 2 You're Earth on fire? Yeah. Yeah, I gave you the best one.
I expected wind and just be a fart joke.

Speaker 2 And I'm jealous.

Speaker 6 And we're also excited to welcome in the world's leading Eli substitute from the No World Experience.

Speaker 6 And Skeptics with a K is the one and only Michael Marshall.

Speaker 2 Thanks very much. I am in my element to be here.
Oh, well done, sir.

Speaker 6 And before we get going, I want to remind everybody that our patron dollars don't just go to frivolous shit like rent and food. Sometimes we need to pay ransom.

Speaker 6 Incidentally, Eli will be back next week, but how many fingers he has may or may not be up to your willingness to pony up some fucking Patreon donations.

Speaker 6 If you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around to the end of the show.

Speaker 6 And with that out of the way, tell us, Cecil, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event will we be talking about today?

Speaker 1 Today, we're going to be talking about storm chasing.

Speaker 6 Oh, awesome. So, Tom, you read an article about it, and it's a metaphor for your daily existence.
Are you ready to tell us about storm chasing?

Speaker 7 I am, at the very least, ready to read about storm chasing.

Speaker 2 All right. All right.

Speaker 6 So, Tom, tell us about your subject, but more importantly, tell us about yourself.

Speaker 2 Look, sometimes when I'm looking for articles to use for this show, I'm going to use icebreakers before we get into it.

Speaker 7 Sometimes when I'm looking for articles to use for this show, I come across one like today's article, an article so breathlessly in love with its own importance, it forgets it's just a long book report about the movie Twister, which this article from National Geographic totally is, and which is also full of purple prose and hyperbole-filled bullshit.

Speaker 7 And it's perfect for citation needed as a result. I needed, and I need to share it with you and with Helen Hunt, who I'm quite sure is a listener.

Speaker 2 Hi, Helen. Wait, seriously?

Speaker 7 Yeah. Oh, and also I edited out all the boring science-y bits.
If you want to learn real things about tornadoes, this just is not the place.

Speaker 2 Okay, yeah. Here in the UK, we call them tornados.
It's like a tornado-tornado situation.

Speaker 1 Before we get into it, Tom, do you want to tell us how this topic is like the struggle of man finding meaning in a cold, uncaring universe?

Speaker 7 Well, you know, I would like to, Cecil, but you know, of course, the image of a man huddled underground while a churning Maelstrom above reduces all of his worldly possessions to rough.

Speaker 1 Okay, don't turn this joke on me.

Speaker 7 Hurling his efforts and his dreams and the sweat of his brow in the air like the playthings of a capricious god, laughing at our desire to simply build something.

Speaker 2 I think he's gonna be able to get to Maelstrom as quick as he did, right?

Speaker 7 Anything.

Speaker 2 He's like this every week, isn't he? Churning Maelstrom with

Speaker 7 safe in a world defined by the random cruelties of our faith.

Speaker 7 Cecil just doesn't work as a metaphor for me, is what I'm saying.

Speaker 7 All right, this is Chasing Tornadoes from National Geographic, and this is by Karsten Peter.

Speaker 7 Around dinner hour on June the 24th, 2003, the entire hamlet of Manchester, South Dakota, walls and rooftops, sheds and fences, TVs, refrigerators, and leftover casseroles, lifts from the earth and disappears into a dark, thick, half-mile-wide tornado.

Speaker 7 The pieces whirl high in the Twister's 200-mile-an-hour winds, like so much random debris, swept clean from the landscape.

Speaker 2 Okay, opening with the destruction of Manchester. For a guy who lives in Liverpool, perfect way to welcome you up the show.
Thanks, Tom. Yeah, right, right.

Speaker 6 It's never a good sign when the writer's padding the word count with a list that includes leftover casseroles in his opening paragraph.

Speaker 2 I'm just going to say it.

Speaker 7 A mile or so north of town, 36-year-old Rex Geyer pulls the curtains back from the window of an upstairs bedroom and watches Manchester disappear. Rex stands frozen.

Speaker 7 The tornado seems to be standing still, too, not moving one way or the other. It takes him a fearsome minute to realize what that means, that the deadly storm is coming straight for him.

Speaker 2 Or it just came into the area and forgot what it was looking for, you know, just standing there. Yeah.
Tornado starts faking a phone call. What?

Speaker 2 The hospital? Wow, they're not going to run back this way. Could have been going the other way, too, right?

Speaker 6 Yeah, that's true. Yeah, just as easily.

Speaker 7 Just earlier, Rex had sat down to fried chicken with his wife, Lynette, who's eight months pregnant.

Speaker 7 We had heard about some wicked tornadoes down in Woon Socket, where Lynette's from, he would say later.

Speaker 6 Could we not arm our British guest with a place name that American?

Speaker 2 Ease him. Just ease him into Woon Socket.

Speaker 2 I'm writing it down to bully you guys forever. Yes, I see.

Speaker 2 Wound socket for the leftover casserole capital of America.

Speaker 6 He's writing that down from his home in Vermont or whatever.

Speaker 7 We were keeping our eyes on the TV, and I was looking outside, and I said, well, geez, it don't really look that bad.

Speaker 7 But now rain is pounding down, obscuring the monster storm bearing down on his two-story farmhouse. Rex's brother Dan, who lives up the the road, charges into the house.

Speaker 7 He almost rips the screen door off the hinges and he's hollering, we got to get in the basement. But I just saw the Manchester debris and don't think we'll survive in the basement.

Speaker 7 So we pile into Dan's car. Should I turn the lights and TV off, Lynette asks? She hasn't seen the storm.

Speaker 2 Tornado's right outside. I saw you guys turn the lights off.
I saw you do that. I know you're home.
Fuck you.

Speaker 2 We're making eye contact. You're an asshole.

Speaker 2 You're like, they're trying to hide from the tornado, like they're hiding from trick-or-treaters. Like, just pretend you're not seeing what knock.

Speaker 7 No, no, we have to go now. They leave everything but a mobile phone.
As they flee, two cars hurtle down a nearby dirt road in the opposite direction, straight at the tornado.

Speaker 7 Tim Samaras, a 45-year-old electronics engineer from Denver, and his storm-chasing partner, Pete Porter, are in a van that carries six probes, often called turtles, squat 45-pound metal discs that look like flying saucers.

Speaker 7 Through embedded sensors, the probes can measure a tornado's wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, humidity, and temperature.

Speaker 7 Samura's mission and his passion is to plant them in the path of the funnel. His hope is that both he and the instruments survive.

Speaker 2 Everybody's hoping harder for one than the other, though.

Speaker 2 I have my rankings, too.

Speaker 7 Photographer Carson Peter hangs halfway out the window of the other speeding car, which is driven by veteran storm chaser Gene Roden.

Speaker 2 Wait, isn't that you?

Speaker 6 That's the guy who wrote the fucking article, isn't it?

Speaker 2 I think it is. Oh,

Speaker 2 thanks. He's called Third Person.
Third person?

Speaker 2 Which is

Speaker 2 third-level Gene already?

Speaker 7 By veteran storm chaser Gene Roden. With them is another kind of probe.
A pyramid-shaped aluminum or aluminium casing loaded with a video and three 35mm still cameras.

Speaker 7 Tin Man, the team calls it, based on the character from The Wizard of Oz.

Speaker 2 Wizard of Oz, got it. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 Dorothy was taken.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I love this next slide.

Speaker 7 No one has ever filmed the inside of a tornado where wind can chew asphalt off a road and drive wooden splinters into tree trunks. Karsten wants to be the first.

Speaker 2 All right, what exactly does he expect to see, though? It's just whatever stuff went into the wind, but a bit spinnier.

Speaker 2 Just film a tumble dryer on its side. You'll get the gist of none of the risk.
It's fine. I'm doing my own research.
I am. I'm stuck.

Speaker 2 I'm stuck in the dryer. Is this a porn scenario?

Speaker 6 We're still at the very beginning here, and his prose is literally chewing the scenery.

Speaker 2 That's amazing.

Speaker 7 The chasers can hear the tornado's jet engine roar and see its snapping power poles as they veer east onto a paved road past the Geyers farm and directly into the path of the funnel.

Speaker 7 Tim skids to a halt to make a drop. We don't have time.

Speaker 2 We don't have time,

Speaker 2 Pat yells.

Speaker 7 The monster is plowing up ground only 100 yards, 91 meters, away, and the inflow wind is revving up as Tim leaps out just long enough to deposit a probe before scrambling back in.

Speaker 7 As the chasers speed away, they can see debris roaring in above them. Nails, wire, two by fours whip by in winds that will soon reach 200 miles an hour.

Speaker 2 What's that in metric, by the way? 322 kilometers an hour.

Speaker 2 That's very fast. There's also now some like saw blades and giant metal arrowheads that they made in this thing

Speaker 2 with sensors that say, yup, spinny, extra spinny. Cool.
I feel like how spinny still matters.

Speaker 7 Moments later, the cars stop again a short distance down the road.

Speaker 7 Carsten and Gene haul the 95-pound 43-kilogram tin man from their car onto the roadside and activate the cameras while Tim drops another turtle. Two so far.

Speaker 2 Good. Good.

Speaker 6 Can I retroactively fire the editor that didn't cut the good good on this article?

Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

Speaker 7 But now the tornado is chasing them.

Speaker 2 Okay, I'm really enjoying all the way throughout the diligent conversions to metric, clearly just to pad the word count.

Speaker 2 And I really hope we get to find out just how many liters of rain are in this tornado and what degree Celsius the air temperature is throughout. You know, maybe how many joules of energy it contains.

Speaker 2 Heaven help them if they only give us it in foot pounds. I want you to guess.

Speaker 2 Every one of these people knows the foot pounds of torque of their truck. 100% they know it.

Speaker 7 They blast down the road once more and tim deploys a third probe tin man and two of the three probes take direct hits the tornado reaches tin man yeah yes yes yes so there you go

Speaker 7 the tornado reaches one probe a mere 80 seconds after tim sets it in place what's 80 seconds in metric

Speaker 7 But suddenly, the fury is spent. Their tornado changes shape, stretching out long and ropey before rolling limply to the side.

Speaker 7 And then it simply evaporates.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it happens. Just give it 10 minutes and a gay torrent.
It'll be ready to go.

Speaker 2 North Dakota is

Speaker 2 really pretty.

Speaker 2 No, it isn't.

Speaker 7 Our main nowcaster.

Speaker 9 Stop trying to make now caster work.

Speaker 7 is Eric Rasmussen, a tornado researcher with the University of Oklahoma and one of the brightest stars in severe storm and meteorology.

Speaker 6 Okay, that's not saying much.

Speaker 2 Through numera.

Speaker 6 Damned with fate phrases he was.

Speaker 7 Through numerical computer models, constantly flowing weather maps, and intuition. He can sit at home in his bathrobe and calculate where the best supercell will arrive each day by six o'clock p.m.

Speaker 2 What's the magic hour?

Speaker 7 for tornado formation.

Speaker 7 It's me against the atmosphere, he says. I try to outguess it.

Speaker 2 All right, fucking relax over there and put some pants on.

Speaker 2 You're doing this in your bathrobe. You're talking all sexual about the numbers.
Relax.

Speaker 6 I try to out-guess. How many guesses does it get?

Speaker 6 And also, yeah, turns out, hey, man, we can all do shit in our bathrooms. We can all do this recording in our bathrooms.
It's just that most of us have more self-respect than that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you can do almost anything in a bathrobe. You just choose a hot chair.
I can do that too. I would just need to get a bathrobe.
I could get a bathrobe, you know.

Speaker 2 Are you not wearing anything? Heath's not even in a bathrobe. I'm wearing whatever I'm wearing, Marsh.

Speaker 7 Are you being off the side of a yacht? You have to wear

Speaker 2 exactly one tornado probe. That is what I'm wearing.
This is a HIPAA violation.

Speaker 7 On May 25th, Eric points us to the Texas panhandle, where conditions look right for spawning a supercell. Our task is to find this incipient monster if it forms.
Get just to the southeast of it.

Speaker 7 The best position for Karsten to get revealing backlight. Watch it develop and ensure we can make a getaway if things get dicey.

Speaker 1 You keep taking rights away, and Texas is sure to spawn a cell of some kind.

Speaker 2 That is for sure.

Speaker 7 When we arrive in Texas, we're not alone. In tornado country, especially since the 1996 motion picture twister, storm chasing has become a phenomenon.

Speaker 7 During peak season, hundreds of people fan out over Tornado Alley, a belt between South Dakota and Texas.

Speaker 6 Doubling the region's population.

Speaker 7 Their vehicles bristle with radio antenna and radar dishes, their dashboards outfitted with computers and satellite-linked televisions.

Speaker 6 Also truck nuts, because it's still South Dakota to Texas.

Speaker 7 Everyone can read the weather maps now, said Stephen Hodanish, a lightning specialist with the National Weather Service, whom we meet in a honky honky tonk one night. The information is shared.

Speaker 7 We don't hide it, so we all know where to go.

Speaker 7 Back in the day, only Dave could read a map.

Speaker 2 Now we're all sophisticated. It's a crowded saturation.

Speaker 7 Some tornado chasers think of it as a clever computer game come to life. Others become intimate with the atmosphere, the way a trail guide learns to know the woods.

Speaker 2 Hey, relax and pants. Relax.

Speaker 6 I'm writing this in my bathrobe

Speaker 7 recently skilled chasers have formed companies that take tourists on tornado safaris competing to see who can get clients the best views of the storms but it's not like going to say niagara falls which stays put tornadoes are unpredictable and a wrong decision can be hazardous i've seen tour buses with windows shattered from hail, the passengers shaken but exhilarated.

Speaker 1 Wouldn't be the first time this week that Ice shattered some windows.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean?

Speaker 7 We reach Texas in time, but Eric's designated storm dissipates into a ragged line of squalls that runs off into the Gulf of Mexico. We don't chase squall lines, said Anton.

Speaker 7 They don't have the vorticity.

Speaker 6 I thought you would have driven into the Gulf of Mexico if it had been a more promising storm.

Speaker 2 Fuck you.

Speaker 2 They don't want him to get away. I didn't want to chase him.
That's cool. That's what I wanted to have, but I'm glad.
Go out there. Go to the Gulf of Mexico.
Good. Yeah.

Speaker 7 In your face.

Speaker 2 Gulf of America.

Speaker 7 They don't twist, in other words. We caravan in the Texas panhandle for days.

Speaker 7 Merle Haggard on the radio, tooling down the straightest roads in the world, chasing storms that only lease and don't deliver.

Speaker 2 Get the fucking

Speaker 2 fucking writing.

Speaker 7 HP storms, Tim says disgustedly. High precipitation, pieces of crap.
Sleep and nutrition suffer.

Speaker 7 Sometimes dinner's a bag of corn chips, some beef jerky, and a Coke.

Speaker 2 Okay. I mean, I get what he's trying to do, but like walking nachos are great, right? Yeah,

Speaker 2 sounds braggy.

Speaker 7 By the middle of June, we give it up. Living 2001 is a good year for those who live in Tornado Alley, but a total bust for us.

Speaker 2 Aw, nobody lost their house and their family. Tough break, y'all.

Speaker 6 But hold, so wait, so you left. We went out and ate a bunch of beef jerky, but didn't see any tornadoes in your article?

Speaker 2 Start later.

Speaker 2 Jesus, right? Yeah, clearly.

Speaker 7 The following spring, 2002. That's how numbers work.
We carry our own technology instead of relying on now casters. Tim is customized.

Speaker 7 Tim has customized his white Dodge caravan into an intimidating storm busters vehicle.

Speaker 2 No, he hasn't. No, but he isn't.

Speaker 2 There's no literally, I don't know. Well, that flamethrower is on a Dodge caravan still not intimidating.
Nope, no.

Speaker 1 Guy shredding an electric guitar on top with a flamethrower?

Speaker 2 Still not intimidating.

Speaker 2 I know you're going to the pickup line at a middle school with that flamethrower on top. That's all you're doing right now.
But also, who's he trying to intimidate? Is it the tornado? Is he trying to

Speaker 2 back the tornado into a tornado?

Speaker 7 A domed television antenna sits on the roof. Screens display weather channel broadcasts, global positioning system readouts, national weather service data, and NOAA satellite images.

Speaker 7 The van is like a submersible diving into the atmospheric sea.

Speaker 2 Is it? Because all you've described there is the mystery machine before weather nerds.

Speaker 2 Squinting a nail, Doc Caravan.

Speaker 2 Nope.

Speaker 7 A nowcaster is continuously pouring through the data, says Tim, but I'd rather pour through the data myself and then look out the window to see what's developing.

Speaker 7 On the early morning of May 23rd, we're in a cheap motel room in Salina, Kansas, clutching foam coffee cups, pulling weather reports off the internet. The Midwest is a chessboard, says Anton.

Speaker 7 We stopped play last night, but the atmosphere made several moves overnight. So we tuned in to see what they were, and now we have to make our move.

Speaker 1 Kind of sucks chasing a storm in a van that can only go two spaces forward and then one to the side.

Speaker 2 It's like really awkward.

Speaker 2 Also, I'm not being funny, but my opponent went to sleep, so I made several more moves. Isn't how chess works?

Speaker 2 This is like Mario Kart in demo mode, and they think they're playing.

Speaker 2 And like, the word chess felt smart, smart. So, they're

Speaker 7 it looks promising. A heavy wind has been unloading on the prairie, twisting the cottonwood leaves onto their pale backsides, leaving grain fields squirming.

Speaker 2 Such a weirdly horny way to say that. Couldn't have been a better way to say that.
Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 6 I mean, it's a it's weird to say, I feel like this guy wanted a fucking cornfield, but it would be like it would be stranger not to acknowledge it at this point, right?

Speaker 2 Oh, hey, there, cottonwood leaves. Oh, the other side of the cottonwood leaf, huh?

Speaker 7 We head out with the skies overcast, like dirty fleece hanging off an old sheep.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 7 Thunderstorms are raging to the south. We haul across the Oklahoma border and reach again into the Texas panhandle.

Speaker 7 By 4.40, we're in cattle country, where the towns are raw boned, as if the buildings had been scoured into packing crates by the prairie winds. winds.
We pull into Lipscomb, Texas.

Speaker 2 Lipscomb, come on.

Speaker 7 And a car full of local women rolls up.

Speaker 2 Come on!

Speaker 2 I could tell from my computer screen there were horny women in the area.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that to be raw boned. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I drive a Dodge caravan babies.

Speaker 2 They're too intimidating.

Speaker 2 Are you intimidated?

Speaker 7 Don't be afraid.

Speaker 2 It does have lots of cup holders. Yes, it does.

Speaker 2 Great question.

Speaker 7 Would you like to stow and go?

Speaker 7 You boys bringing bad weather here. It's not like we want it for you, I reply.

Speaker 2 Huh.

Speaker 7 It's not like we're not used to it.

Speaker 6 They were from Canada. You don't know them.

Speaker 2 They were hot, though. Can you imagine writing that exchange down?

Speaker 2 And a car full of local women rolls up.

Speaker 2 Well, and also in your article.

Speaker 2 Also, like you're admitting

Speaker 7 a meaningless exchange.

Speaker 2 And then, like, no reply. You're like, that's such a stupid reply.
Like, the rest of us would go to bed that night thinking, it's not like I want it for you. That was so dumb.
That was fucking dumb.

Speaker 2 These idiots put me in his fucking car.

Speaker 2 Also, they were punching himself in the head. It was a car full of women who were there, and that made them local.

Speaker 2 It's not like he asked them where each of them lived and checked that they were within like a five-mile radius. They were local because they were there in a car.

Speaker 2 Local to him then.

Speaker 2 Every car that rolls up to him is local to him in this way. Yeah, this is just local incentive proximate.
That's not what

Speaker 2 that word for.

Speaker 7 But we're late and out of position. Kelly and Taylor.
If we try to drive around the storm,

Speaker 7 we won't have enough daylight left to see it. So we decide to punch the core of the thunderstorm.

Speaker 2 Calm down, okay.

Speaker 2 Forcing our way into the bears cage, an area between the main updraft and the hail.

Speaker 7 It's an apt name. Chasing tornadoes is, this is why I picked this essay.

Speaker 2 It's this like.

Speaker 7 Chasing tornadoes is like hunting grizzlies.

Speaker 7 You want to get close, but not on the same side of the river.

Speaker 2 Literally, you got to get inside and start.

Speaker 2 We are like two seconds away from talking about twist control. Oh, like so close.

Speaker 2 Oh, amazing.

Speaker 2 Nicely done.

Speaker 7 Sometimes.

Speaker 2 Say it, Tom. Say it.

Speaker 7 Sometimes you get the bear.

Speaker 2 Sometimes the bear gets you. Shut up, okay.

Speaker 2 It's raining out. Let's write 2,500 fucking words about it.

Speaker 2 Well, hopefully, there's more of the old stranger from the big Lebowski wisdom to come.

Speaker 6 But for that, I guess you'll have to wait for the other side of apropos of nothing.

Speaker 7 All right, gentlemen, it looks like it's too late for us to go around the back door, so we're gonna have to punch straight up the funnel.

Speaker 2 We're gonna have to we're gonna have to what now?

Speaker 7 Yeah, I know it's dangerous, but if we edge along the veil of the skirt long enough, I'm sure we'll find a way to slip in.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 7 Yeah, sure, we'll have to power through her hymen of rain shear, but Terrence.

Speaker 1 Terrence, can I stop you for a second?

Speaker 7 We We don't have a lot of time.

Speaker 1 Okay, it's just that pretty much all the stuff you say about storms seems like really sexual.

Speaker 2 Yeah, sexual, yeah. Like crazy sexual.

Speaker 7 Is this because I describe the hail as milky white ribbons of stormy manhood?

Speaker 2 Well, it's not because you said that.

Speaker 7 I think you guys are reading too much into this stuff.

Speaker 1 Terrence, Terrence, don't take this the wrong way, but

Speaker 1 do you want to fuck a tornado?

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 2 no.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 You all heard him say that with a question mark, right?

Speaker 7 Okay, honestly, what the fuck are we doing out here if it's not for that?

Speaker 1 I knew that's why there was a waist-high holes along the van.

Speaker 7 Just think of the suction!

Speaker 8 Take control of your digital life with WebRoot Essentials. Every day there's a new scam, data breach, or phishing attempt making headlines.
But with WebRoot Essentials, you don't have to live in fear.

Speaker 8 You can stay one step ahead. Webroot essentials is powerful cloud-based antivirus that scans six times faster and uses 33 times less space than bloated security software like Norton or McAfee.

Speaker 8 It's lightweight, efficient, and protects your devices without slowing you down. So you can stream, work, and browse with total confidence.

Speaker 8 With WebRoot Essentials, you also get built-in password manager and web threat shield to keep your personal info, logins, and devices secure 24-7.

Speaker 8 Protect up to five devices from PCs, Macs, tablets, and even smartphones with one simple WebRoot Essentials subscription. For a limited time, get 60% off at webroot.com slash promo.

Speaker 8 That's powerful, cloud-based antivirus for over a half off, but only when you visit webroot.com slash promo. Stop worrying about what's out there.

Speaker 8 Get your confidence back with Webroot and live a better digital life today.

Speaker 10 What's up everyone?

Speaker 10 We're Angel, Diego, and Jason and we're the host of a Gustavaba podcast where we talk all things in the world of regional Mexican music and recently we had Julio Cesar on as a guest.

Speaker 7 Check this out.

Speaker 4 And what would you say is the biggest thing you learned from watching Ivan Coronejo perform?

Speaker 11 The way you carry yourself, I think that's something that I try to watch a lot. And how there's different styles of it.
For example, you have like Peso comes out and he's just screaming energies up.

Speaker 11 I have seen Peso do that, but Ivan's kind of like, I don't know, he just kind of walks around.

Speaker 2 He's like, they just got to see my face. He's just like...

Speaker 11 He's like mellow, huh? Yeah, he walks like a little, so he has a little stat.

Speaker 11 I'm like, okay, so there's different styles. I realized that, like, you kind of choose your style on stage.

Speaker 11 You kind of choose your style the same way you choose your style of music and you go with it. And the number one thing is confidence.

Speaker 1 This has been brought to you by Sprite.

Speaker 7 Obey Your Thirst. Agusopa releases new episodes every single Monday on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your podcast.

Speaker 9 Winter is the perfect time to explore California, and there's no better way to do it than in a brand new Toyota hybrid.

Speaker 12 With 19 fuel-efficient options like the All-Hybrid Camry, the RAV4 hybrid, or the Tacoma hybrid.

Speaker 9 Every new Toyota comes with Toyota Care, a two-year complementary scheduled maintenance plan, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and of course, Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Speaker 9 Visit your local Toyota dealer and test drive one today. Toyota, let's go places.

Speaker 12 See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Speaker 13 Hey, it's Austin James. If you're like me trying to live your best life while living with diabetes, you can relate to worrying if you're doing a good job managing your diabetes.

Speaker 13 I use the Freestyle Libre 3 Plus sensor to get real-time glucose readings and see the impact of every meal and activity to make better decisions.

Speaker 13 The Freestyle Libre 3 Plus sensor can help me live life with diabetes on my own terms, and it gives me more time for the things I love, like being a dad and a musician. Now, this is progress.

Speaker 13 Learn more at freestylelibre.us.

Speaker 5 For prescription only, safety info found at freestylelibre.us.

Speaker 6 And we're back when we last left off. They were punching the core with what seemed like insufficient lubrication.

Speaker 2 I guess we're going to find out, Tom, what happened next, man?

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 7 And so we head straight into the storm and find ourselves splattering mud at 60 miles an hour, 97 kilometers an hour, on a two-lane road, threatening to hydroplane. Visibility near zero.

Speaker 7 Anton is less than comforting.

Speaker 7 The hail in the bear's cage smashes windows and car tops, he shouts, grinning.

Speaker 2 The smaller stuff is the bear's cage. Bears cage.

Speaker 2 God damn it.

Speaker 7 Bear's going to get you. The smaller stuff is kept aloft by the updraft, and only the large chunks fall.
It's like small meteorites banging down.

Speaker 6 Yeah, except they're orders of magnitude slower and made of less dangerous stuff.

Speaker 2 But other than that,

Speaker 2 come on.

Speaker 7 It's raining pretty much bears now.

Speaker 2 Spares.

Speaker 7 When the storm spits us out rather than swallow, we stop to look back

Speaker 7 at the supercell steaming across the prairie.

Speaker 2 Nobody's sure whether that was added by you or that was actually music.

Speaker 7 Its top is shaped like a giant anvil and lightning flashes from it like artillery. Stacks of cumulonimbus clouds pompadour from its top.

Speaker 7 and dark wisps of clouds curl like imps from the wall cloud that is dropped from its rear flank.

Speaker 2 Do imps curl? Yeah. Is that a thing?

Speaker 7 Like imps. Yes.

Speaker 2 That's why this

Speaker 7 is a famed simile.

Speaker 2 It's a very famed simile. Pompadour, the verb.
They do that sometimes. They pompadour.
They pompadour. The imps curling.
Is that curling themselves or curling other thing? Like

Speaker 2 more like the Canadian thing that the Canadians do with the brooms and the colours. Oh, I see.
Yeah, that makes sense. Oh, nice.

Speaker 2 Do you ever watch a really small demon play that game? They're fucking crazy.

Speaker 6 It's way longer than you think watching it on tv it's really far away

Speaker 7 that's where tornadoes are known to originate we sprint into position down a country road and how does this happen pull into a field full of at least 10 other chase cars ah fucking map readers everywhere

Speaker 7 This storm has the only tornado warning in the nation this evening, Tim explains. We're standing in the right place

Speaker 2 with all the others.

Speaker 7 Down the road are the headlights of local spotters, many of them sheriff's deputies. Spotters will react on the side of caution and account for many false tornado sightings.

Speaker 7 Sheriff NATOs, some chasers call these, but spotters' vigilance saves lives and property.

Speaker 1 Dangerous thing about the sheriff NATO's is dodging all those flying pin on stars that come out of there.

Speaker 2 You gotta really.

Speaker 6 I feel like the sheriff NATOs should be the ones that hit primarily black and brown neighborhoods.

Speaker 2 Okay, all these storm chasers, they're hanging out together and there's a storm about to happen. I'm picturing it's like it, they see it out there.
One of them's like nut check and runs out there.

Speaker 2 What's happening in it?

Speaker 2 Why do they need to be there by themselves? Is it hot on this toilet? There's not enough to go around. Like there's 10 of you.
It's fine. There's only one person chasing it.
10 cars. It's fine.

Speaker 2 It's a massive tornado.

Speaker 7 Also, how does knowing where the tornado is going to be save your property? Do you get to put your house in its basement?

Speaker 2 Well, they sell their footage to like WXY Mudstick fuck or whatever it's called for the like local town. So I guess like they only have so much budget.
Yeah. So only like one of them can sell.

Speaker 2 Also, if you know what it's going to be, you can get your super intimidating truck out to scare the sun away. That's what it looks like.

Speaker 7 The supercell moves in with an immense. dark rolling tapestry of clouds that leaves us gaping.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 7 Hail roar, hailstones clattering against each other as they fall from high in the storm resonates like a Harley-Davidson.

Speaker 7 The storm does not deliver a tornado, but after it passes, lightning scorches the sky for half an hour. Brad Carter, Tim's chase partner for this trip, shakes his head.

Speaker 7 It took me four or five years of driving before I saw my first tornado, he says. And I've been out here nine years now.

Speaker 7 If I had seen one right away on the first trip, maybe I wouldn't have gotten so hooked.

Speaker 2 Okay, or maybe if you lived somewhere where there was literally anything else to do, you wouldn't have spent five years chasing weather you've never seen before.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 7 The 2003 tornado season is another matter in time.

Speaker 6 Oh my god, we are three years into this article now.

Speaker 2 For the first time, you can start an article wherever you want. Right.
You can start it just whenever.

Speaker 7 You can start when something happens, for example.

Speaker 2 There you go. Just as a starting point.

Speaker 7 It starts with an explosive string of May storms that roar through Arkansas, Tennessee, and Missouri, leaving entire towns for dead. But we're still either a step behind or a step ahead.

Speaker 2 Okay, it's definitely not the second one. No!

Speaker 2 We might have already won it chess against the storm if you think about it.

Speaker 2 Don't think about it.

Speaker 7 On the way to Colorado, my chase partner, Scott Elder, and I pull into Pierce City, Missouri, where just two weeks before an F3 had flattened homes and left the tidy brick shops and restaurants in the town's main street in rubble.

Speaker 1 Just one really proud pig next to his brick store that's still standing.

Speaker 6 I'm sorry, were they checking to see if the tornado is going to return to the scene of the crying now?

Speaker 2 They got a big-ass magnifying glass and they're just walking down the street.

Speaker 2 Looking for footprints.

Speaker 7 We don't have a grocery store left in town, says the police chief, Mike Abramovitz. It's amazing only one person got killed.

Speaker 7 That was James Dale Taunton, 51 years old, who had positioned himself in the doorway of the town armory, helping people who sought shelter in the building's basement. 60 survived there.

Speaker 7 By June 4th, we're in a caravan of four cars barreling back down to Texas, where we chase a supercell tagged with a tornado warning into Clayton, New Mexico.

Speaker 7 On a farm road between fallow cornfields, we find ourselves perpendicular to the storm's inflow wind. Hail hacks at our rooftops.
Red-brown soil flows across the road like liquid waves.

Speaker 2 Okay, I was just curious, so I googled how do storm chasers make money? And the answer was, they don't.

Speaker 2 Like, true.

Speaker 2 They try to sell money, but they mostly lose money.

Speaker 2 Love a hypothetical game because some of them have never seen a tone in the strikes yet.

Speaker 2 Love the game in theory.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 the world seems to simply disappear. I can see nothing but Tim's red brake lights in front of us.
The convoy grinds to a halt as the sandstorm rages. Its winds approaching 70 miles an hour.

Speaker 7 113 kilometers an hour. Tim estimates.
Somewhere out there, a tornado may be brewing. Tim's van begins to rock.
Do not knock right now.

Speaker 2 Whatever you do. Clearly.

Speaker 7 Anton's face turns ashen. We can't see the road, only the tops of telephone poles.
20 minutes pass. Tim finally radios us.
His GPS shows a T intersection in the road ahead that we could reach.

Speaker 7 And so we roll blindly, foot by foot, out of the sandblaster.

Speaker 2 What's that in meters? You want to give us foot by foot? Come on.

Speaker 2 30 centimeters at a time.

Speaker 7 Some storm, Tim says later. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.
We head head east with dirt still caking our cars, the fenders budding tumbleweeds as big as washing machines.

Speaker 7 We learned later there was a tornado somewhere in that storm, but we sure as hell couldn't see it.

Speaker 2 But that night we found its hook hanging from the handle of the car.

Speaker 2 Amazing. Total in the back seat of the car.

Speaker 2 We got him at the gas station.

Speaker 2 Is it carrying

Speaker 6 very intimidating?

Speaker 7 I like the sheer, Tim says into the walkie-talkie. There are two updrafts, maybe three, dead ahead of us.
Actually, a bit of an anvil coming eastbound.

Speaker 7 We got to get off the highway and assess the situation.

Speaker 7 Sky is now rotating majestically, and a confused bird flies into our windshield with a thump, leaving a stain of blood and feathers.

Speaker 2 Okay, we're to blame the bird for that. You hate to blame it for

Speaker 7 And then a triangle of cloud lowers and sharpens into something pointier and leaner. It gathers into a funnel like an elephant's trunk.

Speaker 6 Those are cylinders, aren't they?

Speaker 2 More than colours.

Speaker 7 With the texture of soft gray cotton. It whirls like an apparition, no more than two miles

Speaker 7 from us, looking alien in the landscape, as if a spaceship had landed. So, it's happening.
After three years of futility, I'm finally going to see a tornado.

Speaker 2 Man, I came far.

Speaker 2 Got excited.

Speaker 2 Soft gray cot.

Speaker 7 The tornado snakes down to the fields where it's chewing up a maelstrom of soil and vegetation. It seems to stand almost still, and suddenly it's gone.

Speaker 7 It just lifts up as if the sky were withdrawing a finger back into its

Speaker 2 fist.

Speaker 7 Definitely want your first tornado to be a finger and not a fist.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. 100%.

Speaker 7 But we are still racing toward the core of the storm, which will probably spawn more tornadoes.

Speaker 2 Yeah, tornado stays put you back in like the

Speaker 2 tin man with no lube. That's the fact right now.

Speaker 7 Flashing lights and hee-haw sirens sirens of emergency vehicles roar by.

Speaker 7 The sky looks heavy enough to sink and crush us when we see another twister bullying across the fields, a squat, malevolent-looking wedge. But it's already past and we're too late to catch it.

Speaker 7 We drive to Orchard, Nebraska, the hail still pelting the cars in the approaching darkness.

Speaker 6 Anton had switched from calling the meteors to little ice bullets, which we all agree sounded more badass.

Speaker 7 We are gleeful just to have seen tornadoes, but Anton tosses cold water on the celebration as we heat sandwiches in a gas station microwave.

Speaker 2 Guys, stop celebrating because of what's happening in our lives right now. Just look at what we're

Speaker 2 heating up that sandwich. You got it for

Speaker 2 cold water.

Speaker 2 Did you get the one hot dog from the spinny metal hot thing?

Speaker 7 We had two quality tornadoes at crossroads and we were out of position, he lectures. Had we been three minutes earlier to the first storm, we would have been there for deployment.

Speaker 7 This was a total project failure.

Speaker 2 Oh, well, Wada took all the joy out of their celebration of reheated gas station sandwiches.

Speaker 2 Guys, the hot dog just sadly lowering a bottle of Chateau Diana wine food product

Speaker 2 back off the shelf.

Speaker 7 And then... The Manchester tornado hits.
When the tornado retreats into that fearful twilight, Tim and Carsten find the countryside obliterated of landmarks. It's an eerie situation, says Carsten.

Speaker 7 First, this beautiful, perfect structure coming toward you in this smooth rushing noise, and then everything is eaten up, everything.

Speaker 7 Power poles are sucked up out of the ground, all the steel wires are ripped off metal fences, and the fences are blown down flat, leaving nothing but a pristine meadow. It's really crazy.

Speaker 6 Is crazy the word you were looking for there, man?

Speaker 6 Whole lives are ruined, Ancestral homes destroyed.

Speaker 7 Pets killed. It's pretty weird.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 7 Rex Geyer and his family drive through the remains of Manchester with terror in their hearts. They look north.
Their tan two-story farmhouse should be there, set in a grove of trees. Please, please.

Speaker 7 But I knew right away, says Rex, there was nothing left. No trees, no house, no nothing, just the foundation picked clean.

Speaker 7 Two large, full fuel tanks had been blown into the Geyer's cellar, completely filling the space. Those tanks would have crushed anyone taking refuge from the wind.

Speaker 7 Less than an hour before, Tim and Carsten had left three probes and tin man in the path of the storm. Sobered, they now retrace their steps, hoping to find the instruments intact.

Speaker 7 I'd swear we put one of the probes here, Tim says, arriving at a crossroads, but nothing looks the same.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, where could those probes have gone when the destroy everything death wind hit? It's a total mistake. No idea.

Speaker 6 Well, I also, I love the admission that nobody even thought to note the GPS coordinates as they're dropping the fuckers off.

Speaker 2 Come on.

Speaker 7 The air is juicy with the tang of mangled vegetation and evaporating

Speaker 7 juicy and evaporating moisture. Among the first I've ever seen.

Speaker 7 They check the bleak remains of another missing farmhouse, Harold Yost's home, but no one's there.

Speaker 7 In Manchester, home to only six people, it seems a miracle that no one died since they all decided to ride out the storm. One couple survived by crouching in a bathtub.

Speaker 7 A neighbor was literally sucked through the wall of his trailer home.

Speaker 2 Okay, but that was unrelated to the tornado. He just knew that hole that he drilled was going to pay off one day.

Speaker 7 The building toppled over on him, but the storm quickly whisked it off into the sky, leaving him dazed but alive.

Speaker 2 Okay, that's the story this guy tells at the bar for fucking ever.

Speaker 2 Just like tornado shows up, I get sucked out through a fucking glory hole, right through. It's crazy.
Dick first, yeah. Then the tornado drops the whole trailer on top of me.

Speaker 2 I'm like, hey, little help.

Speaker 2 The tornado does help. It picks up the trailer.
So yeah, I'm an airbender, NBD, whatever.

Speaker 2 Who's buying the next round? I'm an airbender. Amazing.

Speaker 7 But the turtle probes are there, and the tornado has passed directly over two of them. It's hit one probe and moved north into the cornfield, says Tim.
Then it came back across the road again.

Speaker 6 All right, well, they answered a lot of scientific questions that day. For example, turns out the chicken was caught in a tornado.

Speaker 2 Amazing!

Speaker 7 Amazing, shouts Carsten, leaping around the road. No one sleeps that night.
And his word gets out to the tight-knit chase community. The internet crackles with congratulations.

Speaker 7 At first, Carson couldn't find Tin Man, but the next day he tracks it 160 yards

Speaker 7 across the fields where the wind has tumbled it end over end, leaving a trail of great gashes in the soil.

Speaker 7 It sits poking out of the mud, its glass portholes smashed, looking like a piece of airline accident debris. The still cameras fired only a few frames before.

Speaker 2 That's cool.

Speaker 2 Sorry, I was going to. I thought it was.

Speaker 1 I thought it. I didn't say it.

Speaker 2 I felt it. I felt it.

Speaker 2 Cheers.

Speaker 7 The still cameras fired only a few frames before being destroyed, but those images are probably the closest ever taken of a tornado. Carsten flies out on June the 26th.

Speaker 7 In the final hour, he has looked deep into the eye of the beast.

Speaker 2 Okay, you got like two frames of a butthole like it's 90s dials.

Speaker 7 Tim's measurements are some of the best ever made, says Rasmussen. He's the first to measure everything.
Temperature, humidity, wind speed, and direction of a tornado.

Speaker 7 The data collected will be a gold mine.

Speaker 7 Sometimes you get the bear.

Speaker 2 God.

Speaker 2 Jesus Christ. I love it.

Speaker 6 All right. So, Tom, if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be?

Speaker 7 The Doge idiots pretty much fired all the real science guys, so tornadoes are sneaky again. Oh, problem.

Speaker 7 All right.

Speaker 6 Are you ready for the quiz?

Speaker 7 I am indeed.

Speaker 1 All right, Tom, what's the most famous tornado-based terrorist organization from the Texas Panhandle?

Speaker 2 A.

Speaker 2 Toto Haram. B.

Speaker 2 Fucked up. B.
Wizard of Oz. Wizard of Oz.
Wizard of Oz is the teammate. I said it earlier.
Yeah, that's the whole thing.

Speaker 2 We did the whole thing. B, Weather underground see

Speaker 2 the cloud boys or d

Speaker 7 imperial nazi

Speaker 2 not

Speaker 2 see weather underground is so good because you'd have to change anything i'd have to do anything it's right there it's right there the whole time yeah no yeah sure or maybe it's a cloud boys i don't know whatever whatever all right tom i got one for you too so um importantly that was porn we just ran thank you 100 yeah what's the best website for the the tornado kink people like the person who wrote this in apparently third person?

Speaker 2 A

Speaker 2 cyclonely fan.

Speaker 2 Nicely done. Cyclonely.
Very good. Tom, it's A.
Oh, it's good. Is it A? Is it A? A.
Oh, yes, I got it.

Speaker 2 Okay, Tom, what is the motto of the Tornado Chasers? Is it A?

Speaker 2 He who dares wins.

Speaker 2 Is it B?

Speaker 7 It's that one because of the way you've insisted on hard pronouncing.

Speaker 2 You pressed it in there. Is it B? Be the chains you want to see in the world?

Speaker 2 Sandwich.

Speaker 2 Is it C in?

Speaker 2 Is it C in God We Gust?

Speaker 2 Is it D? Hurricane, Hurricane, Hurrah Conquered?

Speaker 2 If you want it in Latin, Venti, V D V G.

Speaker 2 Or is it E? Tempest Fugit. Oh, God.

Speaker 7 Can you give it to me in metric,

Speaker 7 All right, it's got to be D.

Speaker 3 The Latin translation is what does it for you.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 I mean, for coming up with a joke so sophisticated it works both in English and Latin, I think Marsh is clearly the winner this week.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, in that case, if anybody listens to the No Rogan experience, they will know that I love nothing more than giving Cecil a lot of work to do, and I'm going to continue it on Cecil do the next essay.

Speaker 2 All right, sounds good.

Speaker 6 All right. Well, for Cecil, Heath, Tom, Marsh, and occasionally Eli, I'm Noah.
Thank you for hanging out with us today.

Speaker 6 We're going to be back next week, and by then, Cecil will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can hear more from Cecil and Marsh on the No Rogan experience.

Speaker 6 You can hear more from Heath and I on the scathing atheist, and you can hear more from Tom and Eli on Dear Old Dads. That's right, Tom.
I'm pairing them with you now.

Speaker 7 You take him.

Speaker 6 And if you'd like to keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com/slash citation pod or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can.

Speaker 6 And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, check the show notes, be sure to check out citationpod.com.

Speaker 5 Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north.

Speaker 5 And this year, he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's unlimited wireless for $15 a month. Now, you don't even need to wrap it.

Speaker 4 Give it a try at mintmobile.com/slash switch.

Speaker 14 Upfront payment of $45 for a three-month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. New customer offer for first three months only.
Speed slow after 35 gigabytes if networks busy.

Speaker 14 Taxes and fees extra. See Mintmobile.com.

Speaker 15 Marketing is hard.

Speaker 15 But I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be.
Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great.
You love the host. You seek it out and download it.

Speaker 15 You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion.
And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention?

Speaker 15 You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from LibSyn Ads.

Speaker 15 Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience and their favorite podcasts with LibSyn Ads.

Speaker 15 Go to libsynads.com. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N ads.com today.