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Storm Chasers (TV series)
Encyclopedia
Storm Chasers is a weekly American documentary
reality television series that premiered on October 17, 2007 on the Discovery Channel
. Produced by Original Media
, the program follows several teams of storm chaser
s as they attempt to intercept tornado
es in Tornado Alley
in the United States. Season 5 commenced on September 25, 2011.
due to the frequency and severity of tornadoes occurring there) primarily during late spring and early summer, the time of the most frequent tornado activity (though some episodes of recent seasons have also been filmed in the lesser-known Dixie Alley
in the southeastern U.S.). Several teams of storm chasers appear in the series.
During the 2007 and 2008 seasons Joshua Wurman
, a renowned atmospheric scientist and creator of the Doppler On Wheels
(DOW), teamed with documentary IMAX
filmmaker Sean C. Casey
. Josh's goal is to collect tornado data in order to improve warnings systems, while Sean's goal is to film footage inside a tornado using his armored Tornado Intercept Vehicle
(TIV).
The TIV crew is led by Sean Casey, who is aided by Ronan P. Nagle, driver and former Co-Executive Producer, now Executive Producer as of 2009, of the series, and Byron Turk, navigator and a shooter/producer for the show. The TIV is also outfitted with weather instruments that collect data from approximately 12 feet above ground that, when combined with the DOW radar imagery and the probe data, can help to give Josh a more complete picture of a tornado's structure.
Casey is producing/directing his second IMAX feature about tornadoes. The first, Forces of Nature, was released in 2003 with a third of the film dedicated to tornadoes, the other two thirds were dedicated to volcanoes and earthquakes. Ronan is an executive producer on the film entitled, Tornado Alley, with the release on March 18, 2011.
Beginning in 2008, the program also began following the team from the website TornadoVideos.Net (TVN) led by meteorology Ph.D. candidate Reed Timmer
, Joel Taylor (Driver/Meteorologist) and Chris Chittick (Photographer/Probe Technician). The goal of Reed's small but highly mobile team is to capture "extreme video" as well as scientific data from tornadoes. Timmer's team is known as "Team Dominator" in the show, referring to the name of their own armored chase vehicle, the SRV Dominator
.
During the 2009 season, the series also documented the TWISTEX
team, led by engineer and veteran storm chaser Tim Samaras. The main purpose of the TWISTEX team is to deploy their "turtle" probes into the path of tornadoes and deploy mesonet
vehicles around the twister. Carl Young helps pilot the Probe vehicle while Tony Laubach
drives one of the mesonet vehicles, M3. This new season also brought a change to Sean Casey's team, replacing the TIV with the TIV2 later on in the chasing season. Another addition to Casey's team was the addition of the Doghouse, driven by meteorologists and storm chasers Matt Hughes and Brandon Ivey, who chased as part of the TIV team.
The original Scout, PROBE, TWISTEX, and TVN vehicles all carry probes that are designed to be placed in the projected path of tornadoes to collect data and film footage from the lowest portion of the tornado.
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. They had the TIV 2 and the Dominator
tested by mythbuster experts Adam Savage
and Jamie Hyneman
to see if the vehicles could withstand wind speeds of 200 to 250 mph using a high powered jet engine.
Documentary
A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...
reality television series that premiered on October 17, 2007 on the Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
. Produced by Original Media
Original Media (production company)
Original Media is an American production company founded in 2002 by Charlie Corwin. The company produces feature films, reality television, scripted television and digital programming...
, the program follows several teams of storm chaser
Storm chaser
Storm chaser can refer to:*Storm chasing, the pursuit of any severe weather condition*Storm Chaser, registered US Service Mark for Warren Faidley confirmed by the US Trademark Office as the first, full-time, professional storm chasing journalist...
s as they attempt to intercept tornado
Tornado
A tornado is a violent, dangerous, rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. They are often referred to as a twister or a cyclone, although the word cyclone is used in meteorology in a wider...
es in Tornado Alley
Tornado Alley
Tornado Alley is a colloquial and popular media term that most often refers to the area of the United States where tornadoes are most frequent. Although an official location is not defined, the area between the Rocky Mountains and Appalachian Mountains is usually associated with it.The areas...
in the United States. Season 5 commenced on September 25, 2011.
Overview
Storm Chasers is filmed each year in the central United States (an area known as Tornado AlleyTornado Alley
Tornado Alley is a colloquial and popular media term that most often refers to the area of the United States where tornadoes are most frequent. Although an official location is not defined, the area between the Rocky Mountains and Appalachian Mountains is usually associated with it.The areas...
due to the frequency and severity of tornadoes occurring there) primarily during late spring and early summer, the time of the most frequent tornado activity (though some episodes of recent seasons have also been filmed in the lesser-known Dixie Alley
Dixie Alley
Dixie Alley is a nickname sometimes given to areas of the southern United States that are particularly vulnerable to strong or violent tornadoes...
in the southeastern U.S.). Several teams of storm chasers appear in the series.
During the 2007 and 2008 seasons Joshua Wurman
Joshua Wurman
Joshua Michael Aaron Ryder Wurman is an atmospheric scientist and inventor noted for tornado, hurricane, and weather radar research.-Life and career:Wurman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and attended Radnor High School...
, a renowned atmospheric scientist and creator of the Doppler On Wheels
Doppler On Wheels
Doppler On Wheels is a fleet of radar trucks maintained by the Center for Severe Weather Research led by Joshua Wurman, with the funding mainly provided by the National Science Foundation...
(DOW), teamed with documentary IMAX
IMAX
IMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation. IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems...
filmmaker Sean C. Casey
Sean Casey (filmmaker)
Sean C. Casey is an IMAX filmmaker and professional storm chaser who appears in the American documentary reality television series Storm Chasers...
. Josh's goal is to collect tornado data in order to improve warnings systems, while Sean's goal is to film footage inside a tornado using his armored Tornado Intercept Vehicle
Tornado Intercept Vehicle
-The TIV 2:Casey and his team developed and built the second Tornado Intercept Vehicle, dubbed "TIV 2", to be featured in their next IMAX movie and the Storm Chasers series. Work began in September 2007 by 40 welding students at the Great Plains Technology Center in Lawton, Oklahoma and was...
(TIV).
Casey is producing/directing his second IMAX feature about tornadoes. The first, Forces of Nature, was released in 2003 with a third of the film dedicated to tornadoes, the other two thirds were dedicated to volcanoes and earthquakes. Ronan is an executive producer on the film entitled, Tornado Alley, with the release on March 18, 2011.
Beginning in 2008, the program also began following the team from the website TornadoVideos.Net (TVN) led by meteorology Ph.D. candidate Reed Timmer
Reed Timmer
Reed Timmer is a meteorologist and professional storm chaser who stars in the American documentary reality television series Storm Chasers. He also starred in the documentary film Tornado Glory....
, Joel Taylor (Driver/Meteorologist) and Chris Chittick (Photographer/Probe Technician). The goal of Reed's small but highly mobile team is to capture "extreme video" as well as scientific data from tornadoes. Timmer's team is known as "Team Dominator" in the show, referring to the name of their own armored chase vehicle, the SRV Dominator
SRV Dominator
The SRV Dominator is a vehicle used for storm chasing as featured on the Discovery Channel series Storm Chasers.-The Dominator:The Dominator was modified from a 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe that was used during the 2008 storm chasing season and debuted in the 2009 chase season. It was upgraded for the 2010...
.
During the 2009 season, the series also documented the TWISTEX
TWISTEX
TWISTEX is a tornado research experiment headed up by Tim Samaras from Denver, Colorado. The project normally runs from mid-April through the end of June with a domain that covers the Great Plains and portions of the Midwest...
team, led by engineer and veteran storm chaser Tim Samaras. The main purpose of the TWISTEX team is to deploy their "turtle" probes into the path of tornadoes and deploy mesonet
Mesonet
In meteorology, a mesonet is a network of automated weather stations designed to observe mesoscale meteorological phenomena. Dry lines, squall lines, and sea breezes are examples of phenomena that can be observed by mesonets...
vehicles around the twister. Carl Young helps pilot the Probe vehicle while Tony Laubach
Tony Laubach
Tony Laubach is an American professional storm chaser and Meteorologist. He has participated in several field research projects, been contracted as a severe weather photojournalist for several major television networks, starred in several television shows, including Seasons 3 and 4 of "Storm...
drives one of the mesonet vehicles, M3. This new season also brought a change to Sean Casey's team, replacing the TIV with the TIV2 later on in the chasing season. Another addition to Casey's team was the addition of the Doghouse, driven by meteorologists and storm chasers Matt Hughes and Brandon Ivey, who chased as part of the TIV team.
The original Scout, PROBE, TWISTEX, and TVN vehicles all carry probes that are designed to be placed in the projected path of tornadoes to collect data and film footage from the lowest portion of the tornado.
Loss of a team member
The episode titled "Dedication" which debuted on November 3, 2010, begins and ends with a dedication to Matt Hughes. Hughes had attempted suicide on May 14, 2010 and passed away May 26, 2010 at the age of 30. Matt was part of the TIV team, first in the Doghouse and then, in 2010, inside the TIV under the direction of Sean Casey. Sean Casey's completed IMAX film 'Tornado Alley' (opened in March of 2011) is dedicated to Matt Hughes.Chasing groups featured
DOW and Scout were headed by Dr. Joshua Wurman in seasons one and two. Dr. Wurman and the DOW made only sporadic appearances in seasons three and four, as they had joined the VORTEX2 project, which is not generally followed by Storm Chasers cameras. In season four, Dr. Wurman was also shown to be involved in the funding of Sean Casey's IMAX film, when he addressed Casey about a video showing reckless driving by TIV2. The Scout team of Danny Cheresnick and Aaron Ruppert appeared in the first two seasons as part of the DOW team, but were featured in only one episode of season three.{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:center;"
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! class="collapsible" |Season 1
! class="collapsible" |Season 2
! class="collapsible" |Season 3
! class="collapsible" |Season 4
! class="collapsible" |Season 5
|-
! Tornado Intercept Vehicle
Tornado Intercept Vehicle
-The TIV 2:Casey and his team developed and built the second Tornado Intercept Vehicle, dubbed "TIV 2", to be featured in their next IMAX movie and the Storm Chasers series. Work began in September 2007 by 40 welding students at the Great Plains Technology Center in Lawton, Oklahoma and was...
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! Doppler on Wheels
Doppler On Wheels
Doppler On Wheels is a fleet of radar trucks maintained by the Center for Severe Weather Research led by Joshua Wurman, with the funding mainly provided by the National Science Foundation...
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|-
! TornadoVideos.Net
SRV Dominator
The SRV Dominator is a vehicle used for storm chasing as featured on the Discovery Channel series Storm Chasers.-The Dominator:The Dominator was modified from a 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe that was used during the 2008 storm chasing season and debuted in the 2009 chase season. It was upgraded for the 2010...
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|
|
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|-
! TWISTEX
TWISTEX
TWISTEX is a tornado research experiment headed up by Tim Samaras from Denver, Colorado. The project normally runs from mid-April through the end of June with a domain that covers the Great Plains and portions of the Midwest...
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In other media
Storm Chasers Sean Casey and Reed Timmer appeared on an episode of the MythbustersMythBusters
MythBusters is a science entertainment TV program created and produced by Beyond Television Productions for the Discovery Channel. The series is screened by numerous international broadcasters, including Discovery Channel Australia, Discovery Channel Latin America, Discovery Channel Canada, Quest...
. They had the TIV 2 and the Dominator
SRV Dominator
The SRV Dominator is a vehicle used for storm chasing as featured on the Discovery Channel series Storm Chasers.-The Dominator:The Dominator was modified from a 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe that was used during the 2008 storm chasing season and debuted in the 2009 chase season. It was upgraded for the 2010...
tested by mythbuster experts Adam Savage
Adam Savage
Adam Whitney Savage is an American industrial design and special effects designer/fabricator, actor, educator, and co-host of the Discovery Channel television series MythBusters. His model work has appeared in major films, including Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones and The Matrix...
and Jamie Hyneman
Jamie Hyneman
James Franklin "Jamie" Hyneman is an American special effects expert, best known for being the co-host of the television series MythBusters. He is also the owner of M5 Industries, the special effects workshop where MythBusters is filmed...
to see if the vehicles could withstand wind speeds of 200 to 250 mph using a high powered jet engine.
See also
- Storm chasingStorm chasingStorm chasing is broadly defined as the pursuit of any severe weather condition, regardless of motive, which can be curiosity, adventure, scientific exploration or for news professions/media coverage....
- TornadoTornadoA tornado is a violent, dangerous, rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. They are often referred to as a twister or a cyclone, although the word cyclone is used in meteorology in a wider...
- List of programs broadcast by Discovery Channel
- Discovery ChannelDiscovery ChannelDiscovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
- The Weather ChannelThe Weather ChannelThe Weather Channel is a US cable and satellite television network since May 2, 1982, that broadcasts weather forecasts and weather-related news, along with entertainment programming related to weather 24 hours a day...