4.6 • 4.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2021
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
No extreme weather phenomenon fascinates us more than tornadoes. For most of human history, very little was known about how these graceful yet violent columns of swirling air formed or behaved. Then, in the 1950s, a teenager from North Dakota began chasing them, and a scientist from Japan began studying them. Together, they started a movement.
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0:00.0 | Hey, Prime members, you can listen to American innovations, add free on Amazon music, download |
0:06.0 | the app today. |
0:15.6 | It's May 25, 1965. |
0:18.9 | 26-year-old David Haudley drives through the fields of southwestern Kansas, peering at |
0:24.1 | his windows every few seconds to check the cloudy skies. |
0:27.6 | He's on the hunt for tornadoes. |
0:30.7 | The forecast this morning seemed promising, but so far nothing. |
0:35.1 | He glances down at his camera on the front seat beside him, hoping he'll get a chance |
0:39.3 | to use it. |
0:40.7 | The radio pulls him back to Earth. |
0:42.7 | This is a Ford County radar weather report. |
0:45.6 | A severe weather warning has been issued for Ashland, cold water and medicine lodge. |
0:49.6 | The understorms with large hail and high winds are expected between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. |
0:54.0 | local time. |
0:55.0 | Yes! |
0:56.0 | Now, it's on. |
0:57.0 | Haudley accelerates down the Tulane Highway and scans the flat horizon, trying to spot |
1:02.9 | where the winds are whipping. |
1:04.5 | He sees cumulonimbus clouds building to the south, and the familiar cottonball shapes of |
1:09.8 | amatas clouds just beyond them. |
1:12.4 | All good signs. |
1:13.9 | Haudley's been chasing tornadoes for 9 years. |
... |
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