Original subtitles

[Reed] Whoo!

[Sarah] There comes the Dominator

[Reed] How's it going?

[Brandon J.] Well, he don't have his entourage today.

[Sarah] Yeah, just wait.

Time to go!

[Sarah] It's a completely different ballgame down in Alabama.

[Brad speaking]

[Reed] Whoa!

Holy crap!

We are live again back in Alabama, and we are gonna be

targeting these isolated supercells that are developing.

I'm Reed Timmer.

I'm definitely a weather nerd, and I'm passionate about

the science, especially severe weather and tornadoes.

Alabama is the eastward extension of Tornado Alley.

I know that in northern Alabama, when supercells

approach that geography, they like to produce tornadoes,

so it was a perfect tornado intercept opportunity.

All of a sudden, eight tornado warnings.

Those will need a close watch over the next several hours,

as those will be some supercells that have

the potential to produce some strong tornadoes.

It's pretty outflow-y right now.

Mm-hmm.

[lightning crashes]

-Ooh, my God! -Oh, my God!

-Where the heck was that? -Right in there.

My name is Sarah Kassabian.

I grew up in Oklahoma, right in the middle of Tornado Alley.

When I was in high school, an EF5 tornado hit 25 minutes

south from where I lived.

There were multiple fatalities, so it made me want to get out

and do my part to help and make sure that people can get as

much lead time as they can before something hits.

It's a completely different ballgame to chase down south.

There's all these trees everywhere and hills.

It's difficult to see the storm.

A lot of the tornadoes down there get wrapped up in rain

and you can't see them until they hit you.

I had very little experience chasing in that area.

So my goal was to get a new notch in my belt

in terms of a new area for me.

Oh, hi.

I was chasing with my chase partner

and best friend, Brandon Jarvis.

He is a whiz with any kind of camera, so I don't have to

fidget as much with the technology in my vehicle

because he's kind of got it all taken care of.

Don't look at my chins.

Figured it was a good shot.

[Brad] Oh, look, guys. It looks like the Dominator

just pulled out in front of us.

Great thing about Reed is if you're by Reed,

then you know you're probably in the right spot,

because that guy is one best storm chasers.

My name is Brad Arnold,

and I'm a professional storm chaser.

I've lived in Huntsville, Alabama my whole life.

So I knew that I would be chasing

in my backyard that day.

Guys, we're out here to get tornadoes, but we're also

hoping that those tornadoes don't hurt anyone.

My main goal has always been to save as many lives as possible.

And that's really what I think we're out there for.

I can't stop Mother Nature. No one can.

But we can help warn it.

We're in the Dominator 3 science mission

full throttle today.

We had all of Team Dominator out there.

We have Matt Spatola.

He was navigating the Dominator 3.

And we have Will Clay, our extreme engineer.

What's up? Ready to go.

Got the air cannon in the back.

The air cannon is a custom-built potato gun.

You charge it up with air pressure, and then it shoots

a miniaturized sensor into the tornado so it can measure

the wind speed inside of the vortex.

Our goal was to get inside of the tornado, shoot our sensor

into it, so it rises up through the tornado,

and then we can measure that real time data

as the tornado's happening.

Tornado intercept mode is happening.

Never stop chasing.

[honking]

[Sarah] All right.

Let's go before the conga line gets here.

Yep. [chuckles]

[Sarah speaking]

Brett is a friend and a fellow chaser that has

decades of experience on me.

I would say he's one of my mentors.

[Brett speaking]

Me and Sarah met a couple years ago.

Get out here where we can get a visual.

Sarah is very driven,

very hardcore, not afraid at all,

which sometimes gets her ass in trouble.

[Sarah speaking]

It's of no benefit to me when Brett and I have

the exact same view.

He's the known name. He's gonna get

way more viewers than I do.

Unless I'm showing something better.

[Reed] That's it right there, right behind us.

That's the wall called rapid motion on it, guys.

Veer out the chasers here.

[Sarah] There comes the Dominator.

[Brandon J.] No, not the Dominator.

[Reed speaking]

[Brandon J.] Well, he don't have his entourage today.

[Sarah] Yeah, just wait.

It absolutely brings out my competitive side

when I am surrounded by great chasers.

In no world do I think I will ever be a better storm chaser

than Reed Timmer, but I want to try.

If you want to be the best, you have to compete

against the best.

-Look at that spin right here. -Yeah.

-Right here. -Ooh, ooh.

[beeping]

[Reed] This thing's gonna produce eventually.

-We probably have to go east. -Get out the front for a second.

I'm just getting things ready.

A little snare drum.

Time to go.

My number one thought when Reed shows up

is don't [bleep] get stuck behind him.

A lot of people will get behind him and just follow him.

We got to go.

[tires screeching]

[Brandon J. speaking]

[Sarah speaking]

[bleep] him.

Sorry, excuse me. I didn't say that, y'all.

I'm stuck behind the Dominator, which is

a really cool vehicle for intercepting tornadoes,

but it is not the most agile.

All right, we've got to go a little faster here, fellas.

Come on, Reed. Pick it up.

-Yeah, we've got to keep going east, I think. -OK.

[Matt] We've got a stop sign coming up a little bit,

you're gonna go through that.

We reached a point where we've got multiple storms

and it's always a question

of which storm is gonna be dominant.

We're looking at the storm to our north.

It's starting to develop a lot tighter of a couplet,

meaning the rotation is a lot stronger.

[Sarah] So Dominator goes straight,

and Jarvis and I turn left.

They're thinking they're gonna have east options going

that way, and it's few and far between.

[Reed] I figured that they would probably follow us,

but then they went off to catch the other storm, the one behind

it that had a tornado warning.

Yeah, imagine just driving away from that storm.

It's just the obvious decision to stay with the lead storm.

I knew that in kindergarten.

Thing's trying to produce, everybody.

They extended that severe warning pretty much

all the way to Huntsville.

-Probably gonna kick it. -[Matt] Yeah.

[Brad] This thing is about to put down a monster tornado.

This is dangerous.

[indistinct radio chatter]

[Brad] We're going straight to Huntsville.

Lots of emotions going through my head at that point.

Knowing that something could happen near my home kind of

puts a pit in your stomach.

My wife and daughter were at home that day.

I've got to stay with this storm.

I've got to have eyes on this storm,

and I've got to warn as many people as I possibly can.

There it is right there.

Tornado on the ground right there!

It's gonna hit those cars!

Power flashes.

Multi-vortex! Multi-vortex!

Multi-vortex rate's burning! Oh, my God!

Oh, my God! Please, no!

Stop! Don't drive!

[Brad speaking]

There it is right here.

We've got a tornado coming down right now.

Huge coming tornado.

All hell broke loose.

I started to see trees getting thrown in the air,

debris from homes and other structures

being tossed in the air as well.

[Brad's wife and Brad speaking]

[Brad speaking]

That's a "goddamn it" moment.

All I can do now is race like hell to get back up to it

and try to get my own intercept.

[loud metallic banging]

[laughing]

Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!

Goddamn!

-Whoa. -Oh [bleep].

I actually thought my organs had, like,

rearranged or something when we landed that hard.

It was one of those "that was badass" kind of moments.

But I was worried about having to call Brett and tell him that

I majorly messed up his truck.

We're not telling Brett.

-Unh-unh. -I don't know.

-Jesus Chr-- -[bleep].

I don't know why the truck's driving funny.

Oh, my God.

[Reed speaking]

It's on the ground, guys!

[siren wailing]

They're firing that siren.

-Right there. -Yeah.

I knew that the tornado was

already on the ground at that time,

so we blasted off to the east to get in front of it.

-1.3, going east. -Oh, my hat's gone!

-1.3. -OK.

-[indistinct] behind us. -[indistinct] it is now!

It should be on Will's side now.

[indistinct conversation]

[Matt] 1.2, 1.2.

-[Reed] I'm gonna go east too. -[Matt] OK.

Whoo!

[Reed] Let's send those thrown [indistinct].

We were there with our whole science mission ready to go,

sensors ready to launch,

air cannons to shoot those sensors into the tornado.

-1.2! OK.

[Reed] And in order to do that, you need to be inside of

the vortex, and that's a very dangerous place to be.

-One mile! -I see it, I got it!

There it is! There it is!

[Reed] I knew that it would cross our road just in front of us,

so we're in a perfect position to intercept this tornado.

And launch sensors into it with our air cannon.

It's on this side.

Yeah, we can see the whole tornado cyclone now.

-Picking up some. -Yeah!

We're basically in it right now.

-OK. -Got it?

See those curtains right in there?

[Matt speaking]

-Right in there, right in there, right in there. -Yeah.

-[Will] There it is. -[Reed] There it is!

-[Matt] It's going over the interstate. -[Reed] Zoom in on it!

It's going over the interstate.

It's a big time tornado, folks.

-Yep, got it. -[Reed] There it is.

The whole thing's in a plant, then we can launch into it.

Well, whenever you're comfortable, I'm right at it.

-I'm comfortable when it's on top of us if it gets here. -OK.

[Reed] I think it's coming right at us.

I don't see much left to right, so it's gonna watch.

[Will] I'm gonna launch and I'm throwing the air cannon out the window.

-I'm rolling the window up. -There it is.

-Yeah. -Going crazy!

-All vertical motion, guys. -Yep, yep.

-We gotta go this way a bit. -[Will] I will.

It's going, it's expanding big time.

Coming right at us.

If you launch, I think it's getting in, sir.

-There it is. -The whole tornado's expanded.

We're in the debris field.

[Will] Oh, yeah.

-We're on it. -[Will] We're gonna bang this thing.

-Got it. -Power flashes.

[Will] Big power flashes. Get past these power lines.

Stay on it.

-All right, I'm launching. -[Reed] Shoot it.

-Shoot it! -Here, hand it back to me.

-Whoa! -[Reed] Oh, my God!

Holy [bleep]!

-[Will] All right, I'm launching! -[Reed] Shoot it, shoot it!

Here, hand it back to me.

-Yep. -Whoa.

[Reed] Oh, my God!

-[bleep] Yeah! -Let's go!

[indistinct exclamations]

-We did it! -Whoa!

-Holy cow! -We're in danger!

Holy crap!

[indistinct yelling]

[indistinct]

[Reed] For a split second, I did think we were goners.

That suction vortex was coming so fast,

and I didn't see it coming.

It hit us like a freight train and spun us around in a circle.

I thought I made a huge mistake, and I thought we were

all gonna die.

Hey, hold -- whoa, whoa, whoa.

-Four-wheel drive. -I can't drive!

-Four wheel. -I can't help.

-We're in the mud. -We got spun around.

-Well, you guys... -Yeah?

...that's the last time we're doing that. -OK.

-No. -That wasn't bad now.

It was great. It was amazing!

-You gotta be kidding me?! -It was amazing!

We spun in a circle, [indistinct] bigger.

-[laughs] -I loved every second of it.

We spun in a circle! I can't get out.

Look at the debris in there!

We got hit by a corn stalk!

-That was a full-blown 360! -Get in, get in.

Watch that cable, watch that cable.

[gags]

-Can you see it still? -Are we still spinning?

-[coughs] -You good.

We pushed the Dominator 3 to its absolute limit.

I think we can handle up to an EF4.

If the winds of that suction vortex lasted another second,

it likely would have destroyed the Dominator and we probably

would have been airborne.

[Reed] The tornado thankfully dissipated just as it was

coming into town, so we knew no lives are in danger.

[Matt] I need a sandwich after that one -- whoo!

-That's how it's done. -That's the last time I'm doing that.

-No, no, we're doing it every time. -We're doing it again!

There's still a little edge out there, I think.

You know, there's still a little edge for the old guys.

But I'm not a competitive guy. Good heavens.

That's frowned upon by the millennials.

You're not supposed to do that.

Let's get our bearings through real quick.

[indistinct conversation]

-Thank you guys for the ride. -Yeah, dude.

-That was freaking good. -That's how we do that.

The sensor.

[Reed] I'm incredibly proud of Team Dominator.

We had to cover all those miles to get this tornado intercept.

We put everything into that science mission, and to finally

succeed with Will shooting that sensor

right at the perfect time,

it was a huge win for our science mission.

-Hey, you look a little beat up. -[laughter]

Cornstalk's still in there. Look at that.

-Thanks, you guys. -Yeah.

-Never stop chasing. -Yeah.

[Reed] So proud of us.

So proud of us.

-This was big. -Jeez.

It was the perfect intercept,

the perfect science mission win.

The day was insane.

Definitely the most insane storm chase I've ever had.

[Sarah speaking]

We were not able to intercept the Huntsville tornado.

We got close enough to catching up to it that we could see it

off in the distance, but we couldn't quite catch up

to it enough for an intercept.

In Tornado Alley, I have all the advantage,

but I'm completely out of my element in northern Alabama.

So I'm excited to be back in my home state,

chasing up in the plains in Tornado Alley.

[meteorologist] Extreme turbulence in the atmosphere.

Listen up, friends. We are not done

with that just yet.

In the Northern Plains states

and then southern parts of Nebraska,

I think the big threat down here is going to be

a bigger hail threat.

And then unfortunately, I think

that for our friends and family

up toward the north this afternoon,

it'll be more of a tornadic threat.

We should be live, everybody. I believe we are back

in action.

I'm Freddy McKinney, and I'm a storm chaser

based out of Omaha, Nebraska.

We got ourselves some storms

developing to our south right now.

Look, we got an absolute nuke going up by McCook.

I have a pretty good handle on how storms develop in Nebraska.

Chasing in my backyard, I know the roads

like the back of my hand.

-Look who's back. -I'm back.

[Freddy] Eli is back in action.

[Eli] I've been chasing on and off with Freddy for a while.

I love going out and just

basically just facing danger head on.

-Let's do it, man. -[Freddy] Let's do it.

[Freddy] I think if you're sitting 10 miles away from a tornado,

that's not good enough.

You gotta get up close to that thing.

I think that's what separates the pros

from the novice.

Welcome in, ladies and gentlemen. We're back.

Happy to be back. I'm in Imperial.

Imperial, Nebraska, here.

Got supercell initiation trying to happen already right here.

My name is Connor Croff.

I would definitely say I'm kind of a maverick of storm chasing.

I like to just push the limits to as far as I possibly can.

Here is what we're watching.

Got a kind of a broad base here,

a couple different clusters,

it looks like, trying to go right here.

Nothing too organized yet.

And I was just getting pumped.

Hope we can get a tornado out of it.

I think we need to hit the road

and start heading towards that McCook, so...

I think we're gonna be hot on this thing

in about 30 minutes,

so as long as it can wait 30 minutes,

we're gonna be on this thing, so...

But we got to cook a little bit here safely,

but we do got to cook.

-Whoa! -The lightning.

Oh, my gosh.

Wow, that meso's getting nice.

We are getting on this thing, guys.

[automated voice] Emergency alert.

National Weather Service.

Severe thunderstorm warning in effect for this area.

Destructive 3-inch size hail.

People and animals outdoors will be severely injured.

Oh, my gosh. That hail core looks nasty.

Hail core is a region of a storm

where you have tons of hail residing.

Those hailstones are coming from 50,000 feet up.

They come crashing down at 100 miles per hour.

If that hits you in the head, it's game over.

I'm not really liking the way it looks on velocities.

[Eli] Oh, yeah.

[Freddy] But we have to get on this thing.

We're moving in.

Oh, boy.

The whole thing is broadly rotating a little bit more than

it was earlier, where you had those little eddies.

Now the whole thing is starting to rotate.

-[lightning crashes] -[Brandon P.] Whoa.

-[Brandon P.] Somebody -- -It's getting electric.

[Brandon P.] Not a bad look at all.

[Connor] We're gonna go try and punch this core.

[Brandon P.] Oh, yeah.

Let's go.

[Connor] See, the big hail is just off to our west now, guys.

It's the big stuff.

-[siren wailing] -Siren still blaring.

Still looking over there. I don't see a lot going on.

Oh, my gosh. We got some nice wind.

We should get to start some big hail.

We're starting to get some RFP right here.

We'll see if there's actually large apples or if it's capped.

We might be about to have big problems here, guys.

-Got your glasses on? -[indistinct reply]

Smart, smart,

Coming into core, here we go.

Oh, dude!

-[loud bang] -Oh!

-[bang] -Oh!

Oh, my God.

That's freaking softballs here.

Holy crap, dude.

-Oh! -[loud banging]

Gosh, keep your mouth shut.

Holy...

Oh, my God!

Wow!

This is the biggest hail I've ever been in, bro.

Somebody says Connor's getting hammered right now.

If he's out there, bro, like, yeah, he's probably --

he's probably getting hammered.

-Whoa! -Damn!

The whole frickin' windshield just rattled!

Oh! Big time crack right here.

Large hailstones that fall from the sky

at 60 miles an hour.

-[glass shattering] -Oh!

-We got -- -Oh!

Holy [bleep]!

-Ah! -Whoa!

I'm moving to the back, there's too much glass

flying on me.

Holy crap, dude!

Look at the windshield, dude!

It's raining glass on me!

We're getting absolutely shredded, dude!

[Connor] That was kind of my cue to,

"OK, it's time to get out of here."

-[loud bang] -[Freddy] We're getting destroyed!

-[loud bang] -OH!

Oh, my gosh!

Are you kidding me?

[Freddy] I didn't realize how bad it was

until the windshield started caving in.

I was like, "Oh, we might have messed up."

Oh!

We're cooked!

Windshield's caving in!

Shield your eyes, bro! Shield your freaking eyes!

Oh, my God.

Are you kidding me?

We got big problems, guys.

We're hiding beside a shed here.

The windshield's completely caved in.

Dude, I got glass, like, in my thigh.

-What have we done, bro? -I don't know.

Chased, I guess.

[Freddy] I'd never seen a hailstorm quite like that.

That was quite unusual.

I mean, we're all out there just beating our cars to smithereens.

All of this to just find a tornado.

We messed up.

[Connor] God!

-Oh! -[Brandon P.] Holy [bleep]!

Dude, that windshield is so cooked!

My God, dude. Unbelievable.

-This is crazy. -This is absolutely wild.

I stayed in the car because if that hail had hit me in the head,

it probably would have knocked me out.

Big glass problems here.

I want to just check out the damage on the car.

Oh, we got big problems.

Big, big, big problems, guys.

You got to be OK with your vehicle

getting absolutely hammered out there.

And if you chase as aggressive as I do, it's bound to happen.

Got some three-inch hailstones.

Oh, my gosh.

-[Brandon P.] Oh, who's that? -[Connor] Freddy.

Minor hail. Minor.

Mother Nature is unpredictable.

You can try and predict it, and you'll get it right

sometimes, but even the top storm chasers in the world,

I'd say, have a pretty high fail rate.

Now, I got to replace two headlights

and a windshield

and a plexiglass and the antenna.

There are times where I definitely do take

a little risk just to make sure we can get that shot.

But you really got to keep an eye on that because if

you get too close, well,

that could be it.

We have a big day. I honestly think we might --

we're gonna see some tornadoes today.

My name is Jordan Hall.

Storm chasing has changed my life completely

because I grew up watching storm chasers from a young age.

I was looking at the forecast the night before and had a big

supercell that was gonna come through North Dakota.

A big old dip in our jet stream.

You can see it right here.

And they have issued a threat of tornadoes.

I'm running on two hours of sleep.

We left Oklahoma at like 5 PM,

and now we're in basically North Dakota.

It was a long drive.

I overnighted it from Norman, Oklahoma,

all the way up to Selby.

It's about a 16 and a half hour drive.

There's a whole lot of vorticity pivoting

with this thing. -Yeah, I was looking at it.

My name is Aaron Rigsby, and I'm a professional

storm chaser, and I've been chasing storms for 15 years now.

It's not much yet, but it's kind of got

that, like, troll look to it.

There's a chance this thing's wrapped in rain, too.

There was a lot of excitement for the day ahead.

But there were also some concerns

for cloud cover that morning.

If there's too many clouds and the tornado becomes

completely obscured by rain,

not only is it dangerous for storm chasers,

it's exceptionally dangerous for the general public.

MDP is out.

80% chance tornado watch likely.

All right, guys. Here we go.

I've got a west road up here

off of 14 south of [indistinct] going west.

The biggest reason I chase storms is keeping

the public aware and safe.

I'm just drawn to helping people and making a difference

in this world.

Typically on a day like this, the cloud bases are very low,

so it's easy for it to be a wider tornado,

known as wedge tornadoes.

They're usually very powerful because they've got such

a large and expansive wind field.

Time to find where it's at in here.

We're almost on it, I promise. We are almost on it.

Look at that inflow.

As Jordan and I are looking at this storm, there was

a noticeable increase of inflow.

And essentially what that is is the storm is pulling in air

up into its updraft.

Yeah, Jesus.

All of these signs that are coming together

tells Jordan and I that something significant

is likely about to happen.

I think we're about to have a visual.

Yeah, rapid right to left on the south side of this road.

Yep, here it comes.

Tornado left.

All right, there it is. Tornado.

Yep, tornado in progress.

Yes, wedge tornado in progress.

Let's get to that north road, Jordan.

Copy that.

I'm going to be right with it when it crosses 200 here.

Right in front of us, guys. Right there.

Here it comes.

Yeah, this thing is getting violent heading

straight for town.

That is a violent tornado!

The structure is impacted! Structure is impacted!

Oh, my God!

We got homes getting hit right now!

[Brandon C.] We got homes getting hit right now.

It was concerning for me. It's always concerning.

People are being impacted. Lives are being impacted.

There's a structure hit, but I can't -- there's no road

to get to it.

It's extremely frustrating when your focus is on going to

help people and you can't figure out how to get there.

Damaging tornado in progress.

Damaging.

Holy hell.

Jesus, that's nuts.

There's a north road up here to the left, Jordan.

Blowing us all over the road.

Very strong RFD right now. We're getting hit with debris.

The RFD is where you see all that inflow comes in.

All the air funneling into the storm comes in and it wraps

around the backside of the storm, and you're gonna get

very heavy winds, damaging winds at times.

Rapid rain.

My God.

Overturn semi. Overturn semi.

Or trailer.

Make sure they're OK.

You OK?

You OK? OK.

He's good. We're good.

All right. We're gonna move.

We're gonna move. We're gonna move.

I hate rain-wrapped garbage like that.

I'm flipping around. I'm going to go get gas before

stuff happens again.

I need to get gas at some point.

There should be in town.

I think there's like one station.

I'll be right there behind you.

I do believe this tornado is likely still in progress.

If we could see it, I wouldn't be so worried about it.

[siren wailing]

Tornado sirens are blasting.

We gotta be careful in here.

This thing looks absolutely incredible right now.

Watch, it's gonna be one of those things that just pops

right out of the rain for some reason.

I'm gonna try and block some of those for Jordan.

It looks like he's got a card.

So I said, "You know what? I'm gonna give it a try."

Whoo!

I got it working, guys.

I'll just drop the pump once I'm full

and you guys can just keep using my card.

My ears are low key kind of popping for some reason.

Whoa! Here comes the wind.

My goodness.

I'm pretty sure -- yep, this is a tornado.

Whoa!

My instinct was to jump out

while the tornado's developing on top of me,

to get everybody else fueled up

to get out of there.

Holy hell!

Just do 15 bucks.

We're trying to get gas in a tornado at the moment.

That's crazy.

[Jordan] Brandon's standing outside,

completely exposed to the conditions,

and there's a big grain silo just off to our south.

If a tornado were to hit that, it could blow apart,

and it would blow directly into us.

Thank you, Copic!

You're getting ready to run! Run, Brandon, go!

Oh, I'm so soaked.

I literally just filled up Rigsby and Jordan's car

inside of a tornado.

That got big fast.

I just wanted to make sure you guys got gas.

We both owe you, brother.

[Jordan] The moment we get out of that tornado,

we're all at an adrenaline high.

We're like, "Wow, we just survived that."

But you also kind of get that reality of like,

"That could have been really bad."

It's crazy how you can go

from chasing the tornado itself to being chased.

[Aaron] It really puts into perspective how dangerous

storm chasing can be. We are not invincible.

We are just as prone to these storms as any other person.

Are we all good?

Standing in a tornado in that moment was extremely dangerous.

In that moment, I definitely felt like I was too close to

this tornado and could have gotten killed.

I do what I love every day,

and I do it with my best friends.

It's something that many people don't get to experience

in their lives, and we experience it

almost every time we're in the field.

Oh, boys, I love my job!

[Jordan] That's exactly what I was thinking.