Tell Us 5 Things About Your Book: A Dangerous Journey Into the Heart of Tornadoes

“He wanted to answer the questions people thought were impossible.” That’s how one friend of Tim Samaras described that storm chaser and scientist who died in 2013, along with one of his sons and a colleague, in an Oklahoma tornado. Fifty-five at the time of his death, Samaras had in fact answered some previously impossible questions, using probes of his own design — placed in front of twisters at moments of great danger — to glean facts about what happens in the very center of a tornado.

Journalist Brantley Hargrove’s first book, “The Man Who Caught the Storm,” recounts the obsessions and the unlikely achievements of Samaras while also detailing the history of scientists’ often slow pace in understanding this corner of meteorology. Here, Hargrove, who lives in Dallas and has chased storms himself, talks about his fascination with this story, the many adventures he cut from the final book and more.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

A: It was shortly after May 31, 2013, the day Tim Samaras died. Being a denizen of Tornado Alley here in Texas, I’m pretty aware of weather. It had been a crazy month. May 20, an EF5 tornado tore through Moore, Oklahoma. Eleven days later, we were under the gun again. The National Weather Service was putting out some pretty dire language. I follow some chase accounts on Twitter, and I could see what was going on that day. It was unbelievable. Several days later, when the news started to filter out about what had happened and who had been killed, I was shocked. I was familiar with Samaras — I had seen his show “Storm Chasers” on the Discovery Channel and knew a little about his mission. But I wanted to learn more. Why did he get so close? What was he trying to find? So I begged my editor at the Dallas Observer to let me write this story, which honestly had nothing to do with Dallas.

I knew even before I had written the story that this was probably a book. In the alt-weekly world, you don’t get a lot of time to luxuriate in a story. You have to turn it around pretty quickly. I felt that I hadn’t even scratched the surface.

A: Just how little we know about tornadoes. We’ve come a long, long way, but some fundamental questions remain unanswered. There are times when we still struggle to predict them with specificity. When you live in a city, our dominion over the natural world can seem complete. It’s nice to learn there are still some mysteries.

I was stunned by the fact that when Samaras came on the scene at the turn of the 21st century, we had no data on ground level from the core of a violent tornado. We’re the most advanced civilization the world has ever known. But this was one place that we hadn’t been. We’ve been to the moon, we’ve seen Mars, but the core of a tornado was terra incognita. It’s a testament to just how dangerous it was for Tim.

A: It’s vastly different. The initial manuscript I turned in was 112,000 words. There were whole chapters on Ted Fujita, the godfather of tornado science. There was a chapter where I visited a vortex simulator at Texas Tech that used Samaras’ data. I had chapters where I’d go out storm chasing with some of Tim’s best buddies and colleagues, and we saw monstrous tornadoes. I had these incredible adventures and experiences, and you can imagine how painful it was to cut them completely out of the book. We took the meat cleaver to it. The final product is about 80,000 words, and I think that’s all for the best. As interesting as those chases I went on were, I think the book is better for having a laser focus on Tim and his life and work.

A: One singer I’ve always loved and I think is probably one of the greatest living songwriters is James McMurtry. He has lines that any writers — not just songwriters — would envy. I’ve always admired his ability to capture the zeitgeist. I remember when “We Can’t Make It Here” came out during the Bush administration and we were locked in these wars.

I know we’re not supposed to talk about writers, but his father, Larry McMurtry, has been a big literary influence on me. So that whole family; I guess it’s in the blood.

A: It’s for anyone interested in the natural world and finding that there’s still plenty of awe and wonder out there. And anyone interested in a uniquely American character who didn’t go to college and yet made some of the biggest advances the field of atmospheric sciences had ever seen.

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Publication Notes:

‘The Man Who Caught the Storm: The Life of Legendary Tornado Chaser Tim Samaras’

By Brantley Hargrove

295 pages. Simon & Schuster. $26.