To Study Tornados, Bring an Apocalypse-Proof Truck. And Rocket Launchers

Reed Timmer has been chasing storms for more than two decades, since he intercepted his first tornado in northern Oklahoma as an undergrad majoring in meteorology. During that time, Timmer, who typically logs more than 50,000 miles on the road each year, has intercepted countless tornadoes, each one helping to further his extreme-weather knowledge. “We still don’t completely know what happens inside a tornado,” says Edgar ONeal, a weather journalist who is Timmer’s chase partner.

Enter the Dominator. This is the third iteration of Timmer’s custom-built tornado mobile, which he initially rolled out in the late 2000s. The current Dominator has the chassis of an F350 and weighs 10,000 pounds, enabling it to withstand the debris, gorilla hail, and 150-mph winds that accompany the most powerful of storms. According to Timmer, his “holy grail” is to drive the Dominator to within a quarter-mile of a twister, then shoot a rocket loaded with sensors directly into the heart of the tornado. Timmer has accomplished this once: In May 2019, the rocket tracked the vortex’s pressure drop and frigid air temperature. His team’s hope in the coming year is to launch dozens of rockets at the same time into the swirling updraft of a twister’s “inflow notch.” But even if all those rockets fail, the Dominator is full of its own sensors to capture valuable scientific data. “That’s the whole point,” says ONeal. “You can launch probes into a tornado, or you can be the probe, and that’s the Dominator.”