FEATURE/Get Inside! Tornadoes Touch Down on Cox Interactive Media City Sites.

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE FEATURES)--May 10, 1999--

Storm chaser who inspired the movie `Twister' brings audiences

inside the storm

Wind howls outside the Ford Aerostar as a tornado streaks across the Kansas prairie. The driver pulls into a gas station and suddenly a two-by-four rips through the rear window, shattering glass inside the cab. It's just another day's work for Jeff Piotrowski, tornado tracker for Cox Interactive Media (CIMedia).

Bill Paxton, star of the 1996 film "Twister," describes Piotrowski as "the last of the great storm chasers," and he's not exaggerating. In the film, Paxton portrays a man obsessed with getting close to tornadoes, no matter the danger. Piotrowski is the real thing -- a gonzo chaser widely-recognized for his feats of daring.

Exclusive audio and video footage of Piotrowski's tornado encounters are now online at CIMedia's new Tornado Tracker Web site, created at their Atlanta headquarters as part of a national weather package for the company's extensive network of Internet city sites. (See www.CIMedia.com/FEATURES/tornadotracker for an example of Tornado Tracker in action.)

Piotrowski, 39, has been chasing storms for 24 years and has racked up some of the most stunning tornado images and video available anywhere. His Emmy-award winning footage has appeared on NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and numerous weather programs.

"We were looking for a storm chaser to enhance our national weather package, and we tracked Piotrowski down through the Tulsa National Weather Service storm lab," says Bill Smith, CIMedia national content producer. "He makes a living selling weather equipment to television stations across the country, a line of work that's conducive to his greatest passion: tornadoes. Because of his dealings with TV stations, he was already familiar with Cox Enterprises, our parent company. We were thrilled to find him and to work out an exclusive arrangement with him for our Tornado Tracker site: he wanted a Web site, and we wanted to build it."

Each year Piotrowski drives thousands of miles from his home in Broken Arrow, Okla., across the plains in quest of storms. His specially-designed van is plastered NASCAR-style with tornado graphics and logos, and has endured poundings from hail, wind and all kinds of debris.

The vehicle is loaded with gear. On the road, he carries a laptop computer that receives radar, satellite photos, lightning strike data and other storm tracking information. A TV set to pick up Doppler radar and cameras and microphones used to capture many of the images on our Tornado Tracker site are also on board.

Tornado enthusiasts who visit Tornado Tracker via CIMedia city sites are checking out Piotrowski's storm-chasing adventures in record numbers. For example, RealPittsburgh.com's Tornado Tracker page (www.realpittsburgh.com/FEATURES/tornadotracker) generated record page views after several tornadoes touched down in Pittsburgh in a single day in early June 1998. The page also is frequently the top traffic draw for AccessArizona (www.AccessArizona.com) in Phoenix, Ariz., Austin360 (www.austin360.com) in Austin, Texas and ActiveDayton (www.activedayton.com) in Dayton, Ohio.

"Weather is a huge draw for our city sites, and Tornado Tracker traffic naturally peaks whenever tornadoes strike in local markets, or in markets where tornadoes are a hot topic," says Smith. "Since we introduced the site in early June, we've seen a lot of interest in the West and Midwest, especially in our Cox@Home broadband markets such as Hampton Roads (VA), New Orleans, Omaha, Orange County (CA), Phoenix, Providence (RI) and San Diego, where people can see and hear Piotrowski's storm footage in real-time."

The highly interactive site gives visitors an opportunity to get up close and personal with tornadoes through Piotrowski's eyes and ears. For instance, when multiple tornadoes struck Oklahoma on May 24, 1998 near the town where "Twister" was filmed, Piotrowski intercepted several unusual anticyclonic tornadoes - along with a real flying cow. The video is posted on the site, and tornado trackers can watch the scenes that pique their interest.

Other unique Tornado Tracker content includes a photo gallery of Piotrowski's work, links to some of the most useful tornado-related sites on the Web and facts about tornado emergency procedures, terminology, measuring tornadoes and the path full of mysteries tornadoes leave behind.

In Piotrowski's mind, storm chasing is not just a hobby; it's a higher calling. He first was inspired by tornadoes at age 14 in 1974 when a series of twisters struck near Broken Arrow and he saw the action from his parents' back porch, listening to the frantic reports crackling over an AM radio.

Piotrowski began chasing storms informally, heading toward the action on gut instinct. But he has since acquired a more sophisticated approach. He won an Emmy Award for his video of the Gainesville, Texas tornado of April 1994. The town was heavily damaged, and Piotrowski and his crew were among the first on the scene. "We were sending full motion video back of the damage within 30 to 45 minutes after the tornado hit the area," he says.

He makes a habit of memorizing civil defense radio frequencies before he goes into an area, knowledge that has saved lives on many occasions. For instance, on April 26, 1991, an F-4 tornado devastated Oologah, Okla. The storm tracker's calls prompted the largest emergency response in the state -- until the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

"This guy has an incredible sense of storm and where it's going to go," said Tom Grazulis, a veteran storm tracker who heads up The Tornado Project (www.tornadoproject.com), which links from CIMedia's Storm Tracker site. "Most people are preoccupied with getting away. He uses that sense to get close."

About Cox Interactive Media

The Cox Interactive Media network includes 25 city sites and three specialty sites, BlackFamilies.com, FASTBALL.com and GreatOutdoors.com (www.CIMedia.com). CIMedia, founded in 1996, is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, Inc., and is headquartered in Atlanta. A leading media company, Cox Enterprises includes Cox Newspapers, Inc. (newspapers, direct mail marketing, book publishing), Cox Broadcasting, Inc. (TV, spot sales, television production, research, publicly-traded Cox Radio, Inc.) and publicly traded Cox Communications, Inc. (cable distribution, programming, broadband communications) in addition to Cox Interactive Media. The company is also the world's largest operator of automobile auctions through Manheim Auctions, providing financial services, government auctions, online services and price guides.