Nature's Fury Caught on Camera

Part of the Nature's Fury: The Science of Natural Disasters exhibition.

At 2:23 p.m. on June 11, 2004, severe storms researcher Tim Samaras captured something on video no one ever had before: the inside of a tornado.

Samaras designed a special "probe" outfitted with cameras and an audio recorder and built to stay put on a twister. Along with two colleagues, he chased down a tornado near Storm Lake, Iowa, and placed the probe directly in its path. On May 31, 2013 Samaras, his son, and his colleague Carl Young died near El Reno, Oklahoma on a similar mission.