This man and his son were VERY experienced...and yet, they were unable to avoid death.
These tornadoes are fast and unpredictable while on the ground...and deadly. If you are in their path, and the road you are on does not give you a chance to get out of the way...they will run you down. The best thing is to seek a place of shelter that is underground, with a strong structure around you. If it is a large enough tornadoe, and strong enough, hiding under a bridge for example, will not save you, even if your place of refuge is below ground there. Winds too strong...forces too strong...too much deadly debris in the air.
No, you have to either leave soon enough, or have a strong place below ground with a strong door designed for this to be sure of surviving.
God rest the souls of these men, and comfort their families. These crews have brought us some of the most unbelievable images of these storms at deadly peril to their life. As this stroy illustrates.
This was the guy who was always dropping probes in the path of the storms to get various types of data. He was more than a thrillseeker.
It’s not really all that dangerous a “profession” - though for most it’s a “hobby.”
It’s been going on for 40 years and these would be the first chasers to EVER be killed by an actual tornado (though it seems unclear how exactly they were killed) - a few chasers have died in traffic accidents.
It’s not nearly as dangerous as Alaskan crab fishing. Or climbing Mont Everest.
And really the movement of tornadoes are pretty predictable 99% of the time - look at the map of most tornado outbreaks, and they’re a bunch of straight, parallel lines, usually SW to NE; there’s a characteristic storm motion on any given day driven by upper level winds that changes quite slowly.
This movement predictability is what allows chasing to be pretty safe for the most part.
Last Friday was an exception -the El Reno tornado had a very erratic U-shaped path, and also had suddenly forming satellite tornadoes.
In the 1940s my father was driving across North Dakota when he saw a tornado coming towards him. It was a two-lane road with wheat fields on either side. Fortunately he was able to read a cross road and drive at a 90 degree angle to the tornado just in time to get out of the way.