| Storm Chasers | |
|---|---|
Season 4 title screen shot of Storm Chasers |
|
| Genre | Documentary Reality Weather |
| Format | Live-action |
| Starring | Sean Casey Joshua Wurman Reed Timmer Tim Samaras Tony Laubach Carl Young Matt Grzych Brandon Ivey Matt Hughes(deceased) Joel Taylor Chris Chittick Byron Turk |
| Opening theme | "Blaze of Glory" by Bon Jovi (season 3–4) |
| Composer(s) | Didier Rachou |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 5 |
| No. of episodes | 29 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Location(s) | United States |
| Running time | 45 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Original Media |
| Distributor | Discovery Communications |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | Discovery Channel |
| Original run | October 17, 2007 – present |
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | Tornado Intercept (2005) on the National Geographic Channel |
| Followed by | The Science of Storm Chasing (2007) on the Science Channel |
| External links | |
| Website | |
| Production website | |
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 chasers as they attempt to intercept tornadoes in Tornado Alley in the United States. Season 5 commenced on September 25, 2011.[1]
Contents |
Storm Chasers is filmed each year in the central United States (an area known as Tornado Alley 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,[2] 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.[3]
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.
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.[4][5] 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 2011) is dedicated to Matt Hughes.
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.
| Chasing groups | Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3 | Season 4 | Season 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tornado Intercept Vehicle | |||||
| Doppler on Wheels | |||||
| TornadoVideos.Net | |||||
| TWISTEX |
Storm Chasers Sean Casey and Reed Timmer appeared on an episode of the Mythbusters. 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.