T.W.I.S.T.EX

TWISTEX (Tactical Weather-Instrumented Sampling in/near Tornadoes EXperiment) was a prominent tornado research project founded by renowned scientist Tim Samaras. Its primary goal was to deploy specialized "turtle" probes directly in the path of tornadoes to record atmospheric data from within the vortex.The project is widely remembered for the tragic deaths of its three core members on May 31, 2013: Tim Samaras, his son Paul Samaras, and meteorologist Carl Young. They were overtaken and killed by the massive, unpredictable 2.6-mile-wide El Reno, Oklahoma tornado.The TWISTEX MissionObjective: The team aimed to uncover the secrets of tornado generation, maintenance, and decay by measuring temperature, humidity, pressure, and infrasound in the seldom-sampled near-surface environment.