Timothy Michael Samaras was an American engineer and storm chaser best known for his field research on tornadoes and time on the Discovery Channel show, Storm Chasers.
25 Facts About Tim Samaras
2.
Tim Samaras's mother talked him into watching an annual television broadcast of The Wizard of Oz at age six.
3.
Tim Samaras was an autodidact who never received a college degree.
4.
Tim Samaras became an amateur radio operator at age 12 and built transmitters using old television sets.
5.
Tim Samaras communicated by amateur radio when chasing storms and was a storm spotter, reporting sightings of hazardous weather.
6.
Tim Samaras obtained a Pentagon security clearance by 20, testing and building weapons systems.
7.
Tim Samaras became a prominent engineer at Applied Research Associates initially focusing on blast testing and airline crash investigations.
8.
Tim Samaras's research included high-speed photography, such as on ballistics.
9.
Tim Samaras worked at National Technical Systems and Hyperion Technology Group.
10.
Tim Samaras was an avid amateur astronomer and interested in electronics and inventions.
11.
Tim Samaras was the founder of a field research team called Tactical Weather Instrumented Sampling in Tornadoes EXperiment which sought to better understand tornadoes.
12.
Tim Samaras's work was funded in large part by the National Geographic Society which awarded him 18 grants for his field work.
13.
Tim Samaras designed and built his own weather instruments, known as probes, and deployed them in the path of tornadoes in order to gain scientific insight into the inner workings of a tornado.
14.
Tim Samaras later described the tornado as the most memorable of his career.
15.
Tim Samaras's colleagues considered him to be one of the most careful chasers in the business.
16.
From 2009 until the show's cancellation in 2012, Tim Samaras was a featured personality on the Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers.
17.
Tim Samaras worked for Boeing, doing field testing on hail-resistant skins for aircraft, and for the federal government during his career.
18.
Tim Samaras appeared in major pieces in National Geographic in April 2004, June 2005, August 2012, and November 2013.
19.
Tim Samaras was widely interviewed by news stations, newspapers, and magazines and appeared in documentaries.
20.
Tim Samaras was survived by his wife Kathy, two daughters, a son from a previous relationship, brothers Jim and Jack, and two grandchildren.
21.
The open space enabled Tim Samaras to erect amateur radio and other towers and provided ample room for workshops.
22.
Tim Samaras learned of the property through real estate investment work that he did on the side and to which his brother Jim introduced him.
23.
Tim Samaras had another son, Matt Winter, whom he had only learned about seven years before Tim Samaras' death and who was welcomed into the family.
24.
Winter was fascinated by weather and was informed by his mother that Tim was his father after he heard Samaras speak at the 2006 Severe Storms and Doppler Radar Conference in Des Moines, Iowa.
25.
In 2011, Samaras took time off chasing to help build homes in Alabama for victims of tornadoes earlier that year.