Storm chasers, TV personalities among Oklahoma fatalities

[proud2BlibKansan]

(CNN) -- Three storm chasers were among the nine people killed in powerful storms that struck Oklahoma on Friday night, relatives told CNN on Sunday.

Tim Samaras, 55, his son Paul Samaras, 24, and Carl Young, 45, died while chasing a tornado in El Reno, relatives said.

"Thank you to everyone for the condolences. It truly is sad that we lost my great brother Tim and his great son, Paul," Jim Samaras wrote in a statement posted on his brother's Facebook page.

"Our hearts also go out to the Carl Young family as well as they are feeling the same feelings we are today. They all unfortunately passed away but doing what they loved," he wrote.

Tim Samaras founded TWISTEX, the Tactical Weather Instrumented Sampling in Tornadoes Experiment, to help learn more about tornadoes and increase lead time for warnings, according to the official website.

Two children were also among the dead from Friday night's storms. Scores of people were injured.

Tim and Paul Samaras and Carl Young were known to viewers of the former Discovery Channel show "Storm Chasers."

more . . . http://www.kctv5.com/story/22479577/storm-chasers-tv-personalities-among-oklahoma-fatalities

[northoftheborder]

1. Were these stormchasers the ones who....

.....had a fully armored vehicle, shaped like a plane fuselage, bullet proof windows, and had ability to lower vehicle completely to the ground and bore into soil to anchor to ground?

[wercal]

2. Thats another group

The vehicle is called TIV...

And other group has made a similar vehicle...Dominator III...


Most of these guys blure the line between scientific quest and thrill seeking.

[customerserviceguy]

3. As long as we will watch them and their output

They will continue playing Evel Knievel with tornadoes. It's the same mentality that causes backups whenever there is a wreck (or even a cop handing out a ticket) on the side of the road.

P.T. Barnum knew how to make a buck off of those folks, and the daredevil types think they've got that completely figured out, too.

[hlthe2b]

4. Too close to the thrill seeking line, IMO... Having just driven through MO and KS back to CO...

through this last spate of high risk storm cells, I tuned in to Weather Channel on hotel tv to try to gauge when best to go... I found it very offensive that they constantly switched from weather prediction to interviews with these thrill seeking adrenaline junkies, who were just frothing at the mouth to encounter another EF4-5 tornado... I surely wasn't anxious to do so, but know that this will have such an impact on those who have little experience (or common sense) in these kind of storms.


I'm quite sorry these guys died, but I do hope some good comes from that fact for some who would foolishly emulate them.