A reference guide to the ground-based instruments, armored vehicles, and people that have gone closer to tornadoes than almost anyone else — from a 55-gallon steel drum in 1981 to modern rocket-launched sensors.
Instrument packages placed directly in a tornado's forecast path, then left behind to record what happens when the vortex arrives — from TOTO's steel drum to rocket-launched parachute sensors.
Purpose-built, armored vehicles engineered to drive up to — or directly into — a tornado and survive, plus the semi-interceptors and research trucks that support them.
The teams and individuals behind the probes and interceptors — researchers, filmmakers, and modern livestreamers who built and drove them into the storm.