On Wednesday, Dec. 1, the latest season of Discovery's "Storm Chasers" comes to a conclusion, after a spring and summer tornado season that saw tumult and tragedy -- and not all of it was because of mighty twisters.

(Click here for a clip from the finale.)

The show's cameras followed storm chaser Reed Timmer and his Dominator team as they were among the first to arrive in devastated Yazoo City, Miss., an experience which rededicated Timmer to the science side of his mission, which may provide data to be used in tornado early-warning systems.

Other huge storms also battered Dominator, along with the Twistex scientific team led by Tim Samaras, while also providing new information for the ambitious research team Vortex 2.

(Photo: from left, Samaras, Timmer, Sean Casey)

Also on the trail of wild weather was IMAX filmmaker Sean Casey and his heavily armored tornado-intercept vehicle, the TIV 2 (the first TIV was featured in earlier seasons of the show).

Some possibly imprudent driving by TIV 2 (Casey was not at the wheel; he's positioned behind the driver operating his camera) caught on video and posted on YouTube caused friction with Vortex 2 head Josh Wurman.

As the V2 project provides funding for Casey's upcoming IMAX film "Tornado Alley," set to be released next April, Casey had to agree to keep his distance from Wurman.

But friction with Vortex was only one of Casey's trials, as he and his team dealt with the suicide death of meteorologist Matt Hughes, which took place during a break from chasing. At the request of Hughes' family, the show aired an episode featuring Hughes' last chase, an epic and exhilarating trip through a brutal storm (click here for a clip).

It was a wild ride all around, and below find an email interview with Casey, conducted earlier today ...

Q: How did Matt's death affect the team, and how difficult was it to get back to business afterward?

A: Matt's death put us all into a state of grief and numbness, I don't know if we ever recovered. We had a brief respite when we encountered the massive tornadoes of June 17th in Minnesota. That day I felt that Matt was with us. But, I don't know, does anyone ever recover fully from the death of a close friend?

Q: What does your relationship with Vortex 2 - which seemed strained at best - look like for the future?

A: The people in V2 are my friends, some of them good friends. Their field operations ended this year, as it was a two-year field mission for 2009 and 2010. But who knows, 10 years down the road, there will probably be a VORTEX3 and, by then, I should have TIV5 ready, with all of its hovercraft capabilities in place.

Q: Once your IMAX movie is released in April, will you return to storm chasing?

A: You ever see an image of one of those salmon that migrate hundreds of miles up a stream, their body slowly disintegrating and turning to mush, as they spawn out the last of their lives and then wash up on the gravel, go belly-up and just lay there slowly gasping? That's me. I'm spent.

But...

That said (a bit over-dramatically) I feel a compulsion to keep storm chasing, to see something that for me is like being in the presence of God, to be witness to something that brings awe to my soul.

Q: This season looked like an extraordinary one - was it, or was it just clever TV editing?

A: It was a season of a lifetime, and one I hope to God I never have again.

Q: Is there a TIV 3 on the drawing table?

A: Yeah, but the problem is that the drawing table is still only in my mind.  One day though, as I can't leave an idea behind, my garage doors will part, and I'll emerge driving TIV3 or riding Rocinante 3.

Q: What significant additions to tornado science were made during this past season?

A: That's something for V2 to answer. I do know they captured amazing data sets on 25 tornadic storms and an equal amount of data sets on non-tornadic storms. But it takes awhile to vett that info. But I believe that, in the future, tornado science will be divided into pre-V2 understanding and post-V2 understanding.

Q: How are you and Reed Timmer getting along?

A: Great, I gave his pants back two weeks ago! I'll explain that one. We did a photo shoot together, and the wardrobe lady gave me my clothes back. When I got home I had Reed's pants in my duffel bag. There was even $24 in the front right pocket!

Q: Have you firmed up plans for the movie premiere?

A: It might be in Chicago, or DC, I don't know.

Today's cuppa; Texas Turtle coffee (that's for Vogel)

Today, Feb. 22, is the real birthday of George Washington, Revolutionary War hero and first president of the United States. In his honor, a third group of TV stars (click here and here for the previous ones) share their picks for favorite Founding Father (and yes, Mr. Washington makes an appearance, though some of their other picks may surprise you) ...

John Walsh of Fox's "America's Most Wanted," developer turned father of a murdered son turned activist turned fugitive-hunting TV host: "Thomas Jefferson. He was a renaissance man. He has such great side interests -- architecture and farming, all the different things he was involved in. The dichotomy, of course, was that he owned slaves, but he was conflicted about that.

"He sorta got drafted into (the Revolution). I'm not making a parallel between myself and Thomas Jefferson, but sometimes you do what you have to do. Life takes you in the strangest, strangest ways. There's no real plan."

Sean Casey of Discovery's "Storm Chasers": "I'll have to say John Jay (picture below), because he doesn't get any publicity. He was the mayor of New York. I guess also Benjamin Franklin. He was an inventor, a renaissance man. He was the first reported storm chaser. He saw the phenomenon of a tornado. He was on horseback, and he rode after it, following its path. He went through trees, couldn't find it and came back."

Dana Delany of ABC's "Desperate Housewives": "I would say Jefferson just because I like the fact that he was an oenophile. Also, people criticize Jefferson now, but I understand the whole thing, that he came from an elite class, was and wasn't. He saw the value of his education, but he was also a man of the people. It was an interesting combination."

Mike Vogel of CBS' upcoming "Miami Medical": "Jefferson, his ideals, the conservatism that he espoused, at least as I know it, Jeffersonian democracy. Also, I like James Madison. When you look at the checks and balances that they had to go through just to get these guys to show up at a federal meeting, like of the federal government. They had to take it through every level of their state governments, to make sure their state would be OK with them showing up.

"They were so adamant about maintaining the rights of the states before turning it over to the national, federal level of government. Now, it's completely reversed. We're the little puppy dogs, looking up to big Mama, saying 'Feed me, feed me.' We've gotten it all backwards. Hopefully it will turn around."

George Duran, host of TLC's "Ultimate Cake-Off": "Some of my biggest accomplishments in life tend to be hidden commuter secrets during the NYC rush hour, and Francis Lewis Blvd. (or 'Franny Lew') is at the top of my list. This time-saving road was named after Francis Lewis, a governmental delegate from Queens who was once taken as a prisoner to France (shipped in a box!) and eventually signed our Declaration of Independence. This is a Founding Father who suffered for our liberty and continues to un-suffer my daily commute!"

Jon Seda of HBO's upcoming World War II miniseries "The Pacific": "George Washington, just because, to me, that was the foundation to all the rest of the foundation. It was new. It wasn't anything that was seen before -- starting out together, how the United States is one big family, and we're going to to through everything together. For me, he was the Founding Father of that."

James Badge Dale of "The Pacific": "John Hancock -- he was the jerk who signed his name bigger (HCTV: So, he said, King George could read it without his spectacles). No, Thomas Jefferson. I find him a very interesting man. The interesting thing about these men, the original band of brothers, is that they all had completely different opinions of what America is and what it should be and what is important and not important, and they were still able to come together and work together. I think there's a real important message in there."

Joe Mazzello of "The Pacific": "Piggybacking on what Jon was saying, I think what was amazing about George Washington was that he had this crazy idea -- 'I'm going to give up power.' They called him the king of America. No one thought it was real. They thought, 'If this man gives up power, he's the greatest man in the world. It's just such an amazing thing.

"Now, we take that for granted, yeah, every four, eight years, presidents go and then we get a new one. But up until through (Franklin Delano) Roosevelt, it wasn't even a rule. Men just did that. He started that off. That can't be overlooked, how amazing it was for him to say, 'I'm going to do this. It's my job, and I'm going to go back home and be a private citizen.'

"That notion, it's amazing. It was walking the walk. All of the guys, Jefferson and Adams and all of them, said, 'We don't want your tyranny. You can have it. Leave us alone. Let us be free.' Then George Washington walked the walk by saying, 'I'm giving up power and handing it over to the next man,' and just started that tradition -- something that is so mind-boggling."

Today's cuppa: Hazelnut coffee

This past Sunday, Discovery Channel's "Storm Chasers" closed out its third season with a bang -- and a little blood.

If you missed the action, you get what few storm chasers do -- a second chance -- when Discovery airs a seven-episode marathon of episodes on Saturday, Dec. 5, starting at noon (Eastern time) and ending with the season finale, "EF-3 Strikes, You're Out!"

In the episode, storm chaser Reed Timmer took a blast of broken window glass in the face when his armored vehicle, the Dominator SRV, wound up inside of a twister on the Wyoming priairie (click here for a glimpse of that). He escaped with some cuts but no permanent injury ... and with his enthusiasm not dimmed in the least.

Meanwhile, IMAX filmmaker Sean Casey (right) put it all on the line to get the tornado-core footage he's been chasing for years. As you can see in this clip, the turret of his 16,000-pound armored TIV  (Tornado Intercept Vehicle), and the IMAX camera it protects, nearly got away from him.

In a scene reminiscent of the 1996 storm-chasing action classic "Twister," Casey pulled with all he had, howling into the maelstrom, to prevent himself and the massively expensive camera from being sucked up into the funnel.

June 5, 2009, is a day that Sean Casey will never forget.

"We had a pretty exciting spring, didn't we?" he says.

Asked what it was like to be clinging to his camera with all his might, Casey (a Southern California resident whose hobby, interestingly enough, is gardening), "We were extremely focused on getting that footage that we've been desperately trying to get for the last seven years. So you're really trying to maintain your focus on getting that job done and not trying to focus on the tornado and getting lost in the excitement of the moment.

"The minute you get lost in the sheer terror of a tornado coming at you, you're likely to make mistakes, like not turning the camera on."

And did he forget?

"I had a relieved look on my face (afterward)," Casey says, "and if I hadn't turned the camera on after intercepting that tornado, I probably would have had a different expression."

Being stuck inside of a tornado is a rough time to figure out that there's a design flaw in your vehicle that might cause that camera turret to tear loose.

"I never expected the turret to start moving like it was moving," Casey says. "It was hopping up and down at a high frequency, about two inches. It was hitting against the keepers at the bottom; that was what was keeping the turret from popping off. Then of course, there's that realization that the turret is too big, it's too exposed, and it's taking wing.

"At that point, it's all hands on deck. You've got to get under that thing and hold on for dear life, because if that camera goes, not only have we missed a shot, but we've lost a valuable piece of equipment. I'm sure if that thing had been taken for a ride, it would have been destroyed.

"It was weird. It was like, do you ever expect to be holding onto something for dear life in a tornado? It's like something you would expect to see in the movie 'Twister.' Those moments are insane. How could it happen in reality?

"And then you experience it. You put yourself in that situation where something totally fictional becomes reality, and you are holding onto something for dear life in a tornado. It was surreal."

Casey says he immediately added a one-inch bolt to the TIV and ran a strap from it through the turret to help anchor it, and he plans to add deflectors of some sort to reduce the wind the structure has to endure.

Of course, the TIV doesn't work alone searching for twisters. The accompanying vechicle called the TIV Doghouse (seen behind the TIV at left; double-click on the image for a closer look) features a driver and a meteorologist/navigator, which help the TIV team know where to go next. Casey also has a partnership of sorts with Vortex2, a scientific team led by research meteorologist Dr. Joshua Wurman.

At one point near the end of the season, Casey promised to stick close to Vortex2, but when better storms beckoned, off he went. In the end, it worked out, but while the two teams cooperate, it's obvious they have different motivations.

"We're not coming to the table as scientists," Casey says. "We're coming into their realm and working with them with the focus of getting IMAX footage and making an IMAX film that really portrays and mirrors the amazing spectacle that does exist out there.

"So you do have a clash of characters. And we're working with Vortex2. We have instruments on our vehicle, and we stick with them as long as we can. This last year, we might have separated ourselves a lot, but when it came down to it, the only tornado that they collected data on and intercepted, we were there, and we were a part of their mission."

The most important question is, how does the footage look?

"Oh," says Casey, "it's awesome. The tornado that we intercepted was a low-contrast tornado. It wasn't picking up dirt, just because it was going over prairie land. On TV, it doesn't really translate, but on the IMAX screen, you can actually see the individual pieces of grass times a million, just blasting by. You can see the condensation wave from the ground, rolling towards you.

"It's quite a good shot."

Casey plans to head out with Vortex2 for another season of storm chasing and filming in the spring of 2010, then aims to release his film, "Tornado Alley," in early 2011.

As for the TIV, it's had to suffer a indignity that would never happen in a tornado.

"It's actually parked behind my work," Casey says, "and that's in North Hollywood. It's already been tagged. Somebody found it and tagged it. Yeah. It's just gathering leaves right now."