Short Wave - A survivor's view from inside a tornado

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

What’s the dumbest thing Perry Samson says he’s ever done? Getting caught inside a tornado.  But when you’re an atmospheric scientist who studies supercell thunderstorms—with a special interest in the ones that cause tornadoes—that sort of thing is a bit of an occupational hazard. Lucky for Perry, he also made a split-second decision while in the tornado that may be the smartest thing he’s ever done. So today on the show: What we can learn from nature at its wildest.Interested in more science behind the weather? Email us your question at [e-mail] public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. It's the middle of the day in Kansas in May, and yet it was like nighttime. We had to turn the lights on, and the car just to see the road. Perry Sampson was looking up at a massive cloud, one that was blocking the whole sun. And to our south, we see rotation, and that's a sign that this cloud means business. Most of us would have taken that as a sign to bolt out of there. But this is exactly what Perry was waiting for. Because he's an atmospheric scientist,

and he was out there that day with his students to get them some hands-on experience. What more exciting bit of nature is there than a tornado? I mean, this is such an unusual event where this cloud is like several miles tall, and the whole damn thing is rotating. And you're sitting underneath this thing, and it's crackling like there's a large machine with sparks going off inside. It's unsettling. to be in that situation.

The situation was studying supercell thunderstorms. They're massive and known for often producing high winds, large hail, and even tornadoes. Any meteorologist with a beating heart has an enthusiasm to study supercell thunderstorm. And on this day, they'd found one. Holy smokes. T1? Yeah, go ahead. What do you got?

We have precept rapidly moving westward while the base of the cloud rapidly moves east. Oh, that's a tornado. Okay, we got a tornado on the ground directly to our south. We may need to move east here. This is very close, guys. That's a couple of Perry students from a video they took that day. Perry followed the car with his students moving east until... I could not see the front of the car anymore.

There was so much debris flying. The winds were so strong. And I knew it would be dangerous to continue driving, because I didn't. didn't know where my students were. And that was when he realized he was stuck, inside a tornado. Now, I have joked with my students for many years that if one of them could get a video inside a tornado looking straight up, they get an instant PhD. So I'm trying my darn just to take a picture, since I know this is a rare opportunity, and this might be my last opportunity. but it's so dark, the camera won't work.

At that point, it was time to pray and get down on the seats and try to avoid damage if something came through the window. So the wind was blowing against me at a high rate of speed, and things were flying across this field and just vibrating on the front windshield, and I'm flying off. I'm thinking, my God, if there's a cow in this field, I've seen that movie. What a hard way to go. But then, Perry made a radical decision

that probably saved his life. So today on the show, how Perry Sampson survived inside a tornado and why Supercell thunderstorms keep him coming back. I got the drone a little shaken, but we're all okay. I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. So Perry, you survived the tornado. Like, you are talking to me not from the beyond,

but in the same plane. You were out there studying Supercell thunderstorms. the ones that produce tornadoes. What are supercell thunderstorms? And like, what drew you to them? Oh, my gosh. I think they're supercell thunderstorms. It's sort of the ultimate thunderstorm.

And they are much bigger than your run-of-the-mill thunderstorm. To create a supercell thunderstorms requires a unique set of conditions, one of which is what they call convective instability. Moister as it condenses is going to release heat, and the heat is going to cause buoyancy in the atmosphere. But under certain conditions, that heat, that muggy, moist air near the ground is contained by a layer maybe a mile above the surface. And it's called an inversion.

A layer of what? It's a layer of air. I like to think of it like saran wrap over jello or something. Okay, it's like a heavy blanket on this muggy air. All of muggy air is contained in that layer. And so storm won't form. Another situation has to happen is that high in the atmosphere, the jet stream plays a role. And along the jet stream, there are variations in wind speed.

And those variations in wind speed cause what they call divergence. That basically the air is coming in at one speed, leaving it a faster speed. It causes a bit of a vacuum, which is going to aid any rising air. Okay. It like churns things. It has the potential to churn things. you can break through that inversion. That like heavy blanket over that muggy air. Right.

And here's a point in class I'd always ask the students, which is heavier? Muggy hot air versus hot dry air. I would think the muggy were one because it has water in it. Most people would say that, but that's wrong. Oh, my God. It turns out that the hot dry air is heavier than the hot muggy air. Why?

Because we're adding in water vapor and H2O is lighter than the nitrogen and oxygen. Oh, so more. can go in. Correct. And that hot, dry air then moving out of, say, western Texas creates the dry line. And that can be a trigger for these storms. Just the storms, not the tornadoes yet, right? Just the storm. And what we would do is our cars would be equipped with instruments. And we would drive looking for the spot where suddenly the dew point or the humidity changed dramatically. It's like fishing. You would just follow that dry line. It's one of the ways. to identify places where these storms could form.

And so that hot dry air is able to basically push the hot moisture up and break through that inversion. Yeah. And once you punch a hole in that inversion, then all hell breaks loose. Because this is hot air is going to be condensing. Condensing is going to release more heat. It becomes ever more buoyant. And you can just sit there without even a time lapse

and watch these clouds grow rapidly. And so once these clouds are growing rapidly, they're going up, what has to happen for that spiral rotation and that tornado to be produced? That air near the ground, that hot muggy air, is usually coming from the south or southeast. And the air above the inversion is coming usually from the west. And so if you put a pencil between your two hands and rub them together, there's going to be a horizontal rotation. and so take that horizontal rotation,

now you burst through the inversion it's going to carry that rotation vertically. Okay. And that, we think, plays a role in helping to form some of the rotation for a tornado. But so you were saying that you're following this dry line, kind of like fishing,

and in this case, you were surprised. You're like, oh, my gosh, it's right behind us and it's going really fast. Why is it so hard to predict where tornadoes will emerge? Yeah, the very simplistic case, I just gave you, breaks down when you're actually in the field. Yeah.

How it creates a specific tornado is, that's why we study them. Yeah. Because we don't yet know all the details of all the different forces that help organize those storms and so many large thunderstorms that don't produce a tornado. Yeah. And obviously, to do a better job of predicting this and making people safe requires far more research than we've already done. So Perry, what was the decision that saved your life? I wish I could take credit for the good decision here. I made the decision to do the wrong

thing and wound up in a precarious spot. So the only decision I possibly made that was helpful was turning the car into the wind. Now, for the listeners, should you ever be in the situation that 20 was bearing down on you, the advice is to get out of the car. Really? The advice is to get into a ditch, get it somewhere low on the ground. Of course, the wind goes to zero at the surface. He can't move the ground so much. So what you're trying to do is simply avoid flying debris.

Yeah. Best of all, listen to the warnings about severe weather and don't get in that area. Yeah. I'm just wondering, though, you couldn't open the doors. So you turn the car into the wind. You know, I'm not an atmospheric scientist. I'm a physicist. But I still don't understand why turning into the wind was better.

Why did it help? My logic was that the aerodynamics of the engineers who built that Chevy Cobalt were smart enough to design it in such a way that it was going to be very aerodynamic. And yes, it was. So you're like, it survived a wind tunnel in its creation. So maybe it can survive this. Well, that, in my mind, it's sitting sideways to the wind coming, just made for a bigger. Bigger surface area. Bigger surface area, yes.

Yeah, wow. And I had to get the picture. I was trying to get the picture. Oh, my gosh. You're like, this is actually about my picture. Let's get one shot. So what happened after you got out of the tornado? Once they had passed over me, I got out of the car.

The car's embedded in mud. The wheel wells were just packed with mud. There's straw embedded in every crack. The roof of the car is lifted a little bit off the car body. the antenna is bent 90 degree angle yeah we drove to the next town and took the car through a car wash straightened the antenna and went on to chase the next door every time i do this talk i have to do a shout out to the chevy cobalt a very air damning vehicle forever was one yeah yeah they should give you a free um car okay you said that once you were like clean the car and fixed it up and returned it

to the rental company none the wiser you do you do that you did you do you do you do you do you do you do you do you do you did go out to another storm. Why did you do that? And what did you find? That's what we do. We're in the field and the opportunities don't exist often to see these supercelled thunderstorms. It's like, why do you go to the Grand Canyon? I mean, again, I'm not trying to sell the idea of going to see these storms. Right, right, right, right. You ask me why I would do it as a scientist. Yeah. It's because I studied meteorology my whole life and this is sort of the pinnacle of what meteorology creates. And like you with an astronomy, I'm sure there are things that you go out

and people ask, why are you standing outside in the middle of the night to see a distant comet? Yeah. It's just what you're there for. Yeah, I'm standing out there because I want to see a star explode. That's what I want to see. Our interest in being in the field was to observe, make measurements, and learn from the process. The fact that we survive is enough from.

me that all right, let's take lessons learned here and maybe take a bit more caution. Yeah. Try to be the chaser and not the chasee. Perry, thank you so much for talking with us today. My pleasure. Stay well. Yeah. Don't chase tornadoes.

Do not chase tornadoes. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend, maybe one that loves the movie Twister, Twister 2. It really helps our show. This episode was produced by Arundati Nyir. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and Tyler Jones checked the facts. The audio engineer was On Lee Wong. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Shortwave from NPR.