Tornadoes produce the fastest wind speeds in the world and can cause monumental destruction. In 2008, atmospheric scientist Perry Samson was conducting field research on supercell storms in Oberlin, Kansas, when he got a much closer look at these devastating weather phenomena than he expected — and got dragged into a tornado.
Samson, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at the University of Michigan, was on a teaching trip, helping students learn how to make measurements and observations. He’d set up a foundation so students could go and study these thunderstorms in the field, giving them the chance to learn how to conduct large field studies.
A supercell is a thunderstorm with a persistent rotating updraft. If the updraft is being fed by warm, moist air at ground level, it can turn into a tornado — but this is relatively rare. Around 20% of supercell storms end up as tornadoes, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Severe Storms Laboratory.
Hannah Osborne: How quickly did the tornado form, and at what point did you realize you were in trouble?
Perry Samson: We could see there was some motion inside these clouds which could produce a tornado. It formed to our south, and we immediately realized that the winds in the upper atmosphere were from south to north and so this thing was going to be moving towards us. Despite all the training we’ve been through, all the preparation we’ve gone through, realizing a tornado is bearing down, you sort of freak out.
My biggest concern was obviously making sure the students are going to be safe. We thought we’d drive to the east to get out of the way. And my students made it out of the way, but I wasn’t as fast as they were.
HO: What were you thinking at this point?
PS: I wound up getting caught in the debris to the point that I could not see even the front of the car. It was so much debris flying, and I realized that I was now near the core of the tornado. I was thinking, I’ve been training, studying these things myself — so I knew the wind flow and how the wind is going to move. So I tried to position the car to take advantage of the aerodynamics of the vehicle, and this is the point where I always have to do a shout out for the Chevrolet Cobalt. The car has excellent aerodynamics, so I pointed it into the wind as best I could.
You should also understand that I’m from a family of meteorologists. My sister and my brother are also meteorologists. So for me, this was exciting. But I also knew the dangers and things were slamming against the windshield and vibrating and flying off debris of all kinds — sticks, twigs, everything. And I thought, “Oh my God, is there a cow in this field? I’ve seen the movies. What a horrible way to die.”
I tried to take a picture, because I also offered, jokingly, in my courses, the first student who could get a video looking straight up the insides of a tornado, I would give an instant Ph.D. to. Of course, they’d have to live long enough to write it up. So, knowing that joke, I tried to take a picture. It was funny, but it was so black inside that the camera wouldn’t work. I couldn’t take any pictures inside the tornado, so I just hunkered down on the front seat, got as low as possible, expecting the car was going to get bashed.
Thank God, the storm passed over me. And I got out, and the car was embedded with straw in every crack. Between the door and the window, anything, just straw embedded straight into the car. The front roof of the vehicle was actually lifted a little bit off the car. We just went to the next town, and we took her through the car wash.
HO: What did the car rental company say when you brought the car back?
SP: You know, I forgot to mention that. They asked, “How was the car, good?” I said, “Oh it worked very well; thank you.”
HO: When you were in the middle of it, was it completely different to what you imagined being in a tornado would be like?
SP: I’ve never thought about it, but if the tornado’s been on the ground for more than a couple of minutes, it’s going to be picking up soil and straw and whatever’s in the path of buildings. That’s the greatest danger right there, flying debris. In fact, we teach our students, if your car is in the path, get out of the car and get into a ditch. But you want to be as low to the ground as possible because the wind speed is lowest at the surface.
I tried to open the door, [but] the power of the wind was such that we could not even get the door open. So I said, “I’ve done everything wrong.” It’s one of those moments where you think, ‘Yeah, I should have been more religious.”
HO: From the start of realizing, “I’m not getting out of this” to when it finished, how long was that?
SP: It wasn’t long. I mean, it seemed long at the time. But I think it was — well, in fact, I know — it was less than a minute, because we had data. Our cars were measuring wind speed, wind direction, pressure, humidity, all this. We could see the winds, the pressure change, was significant.
It would be like you’re in an elevator going from the bottom to the top of a 20-story building in 10 seconds. So it’s quite a pressure change, and you notice that. And both as it goes down, it comes back up again. But beyond that, the wind speeds were somewhere close to 200 miles an hour [322 km/h], we estimate, based on our measurements. It’s hard to describe it; it’s just such a fast change.
[With] a hurricane, you know it’s coming for days. You know it’s going to happen. But this, you got, I would say it was a minute. It was a minute from when it began to when it was over.
HO: What was your first thought when it ended?
SP: The first thing I did is, I called my colleague from Texas Tech University, and he claims he still has the recording of my voice, which was a mix of fright and enthusiasm: a), I almost killed myself with b) Holy cow, this is what it looked like inside.
I think he just felt sorry for me because I put myself in such a terrible situation and the students in a terrible situation.
HO: Did that experience change how you looked at tornadoes and the work you were doing on them?
SP: I taught a class for many years, and it was called “Extreme weather and climate change” — and issues on the table were, how will extreme weather events change in a warming climate? So I can bring these videos of the experience and stories to the classroom, and it made the conversation more engaging, I think, for the students to be able to ask questions about it, more details of what it’s like in these storms.
It didn’t affect my research, but my research really isn’t on extreme weather. That’s just a passion. To this day, I get asked all the time to come and give a talk because it’s so foolish, people want to hear it over and over again.
We continued doing the [student field trip] for the next several years. It continued, in fact, to set up a whole endowment at my university, so after I retired, they had the resources to be able to go and send students out — not necessarily storm chasing. I’ve also taken teams of students to the innards of Greenland, where we make atmospheric measurements related to climate changes, get the students out into the field, give them the opportunity to discover more than just the science, the passion for this field.
HO: But you wouldn’t recommend going into a tornado?
SP: Absolutely not, no.
Editor’s note: This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
