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South Dakota Storm Chasers

Photo: Storms chasers and a South Dakota tornado

The tornado of a lifetime snakes down a South Dakota road toward Tim Samaras, an engineer and avid tornado chaser from Denver. Minutes earlier, the storm had destroyed the tiny village of Manchester, fortunately with no loss of life. Samaras and a National Geographic team spent months on the front lines of severe storm research. Their mission was to place weather-measuring probes in the path of a tornado—then get out of the way.

Photograph by Carsten Peter