Reed Timmer, and his Storm Chasers team, pulled into Falls City on Friday and booked several rooms for the afternoon at the Check-In Motel. He was in town looking for tornadoes.
Timmer’s experience is unrivaled in the field of extreme weather reporting, tracking and prediction. As a star on the Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers, Timmer became the first person in history to record high definition video from inside a tornado. The 2008 season of Storm Chasers had a record 19 million viewers, making it the highest rated show in the history of the Discovery Channel.
Timmer, a P.h.D. candidate at the University of Oklahoma, has been chasing storms since 1998 when he shot video of his first tornado. Since then, Timmer has tracked over 250 tornadoes, and dozens of powerful hurricanes. Timmer documented and tracked an EF-5 tornado that struck Moore, OK in 1999. Timmer also documented the destructive force of Hurricanes Katrina and Ike.
Timmer has also appeared in another Discovery Channel documentary, When Nature Strikes, which featured footage of him and his crew intercepting Hurricane Ike on Galveston Island. Timmer has appeared on all major news networks, and is the CEO of Weather Fusion, LLC and Extreme Tornado Tours, LLC. He has a B.S. and a M.S. in Meteorology from the University of Oklahoma. Timmer is also the creator of TornadoVideos.net, a popular website designed to track Storm Chasers’ video feeds and news reports from all across the United States.
Storm Chasers are best known as wild adrenaline junkies. While this may be true in some cases, Storm Chasers also provide a valuable service to the public. When a team spots a twister, the location is reported to the National Weather Service, which can then issue an advanced warning to the region that is affected.
“I am a scientist,” Timmer said. “If I were looking for cheap thrills, I would just go sky-diving. There is no money in this, and I don’t have a girlfriend. I’m just trying to collect data that will help us understand weather a little better, and save lives.”
On Friday, a super-cell of storm activity was predicted to hit Richardson County. Timmer and his armored vehicle, the ‘Dominator,’ were ready and waiting for tornadoes to sweep through the area, but the storm never came.
“We believe there is going to be major storm activity here,” Timmer said on Friday morning. “We don’t necessarily believe Falls City is going to be hit, we just believe that there will be intense storm activity in this region, and we believe Falls City is a great central location for us to launch our vehicles should a tornado touchdown.”
Timmer arrived in Falls City at around 11 a.m. on Friday, after having driven all night from Norman, OK.
“I’ve had two hours of sleep in the last 48,” Timmer said. “We left Norman (Oklahoma) yesterday at five o’clock. We drove straight through.”
Timmer drives a vehicle known as the Dominator. The Dominator is a 2008 Chevy Tahoe with a thick coat of armor made from Rhino Lining and bullet-proof glass. The Dominator is designed to withstand high-speed winds from inside a tornado. The specially designed vehicle is equipped with hydraulics, making it possible for the vehicle to lower itself to the ground and create a suction. This makes it possible for Timmer to direct his vehicle into the path of a twister.
“Its absolutely amazing,” said Timmer, “to drive into a tornado and experience the storm from inside the funnel. There is nothing like it.”
The sensors and equipment on the Dominator are trying to gauge the speed of wind from inside the tornado. It is theorized that winds inside a tornado can reach 500 mph.
“We haven’t been able to gauge winds at that speed,” Timmer said, “but we have gauged wind speeds at 155 mph from inside a tornado. Our purpose is to study these winds known as suction vortices. These are like suction spots that occur at the base of the tornado where the tornado makes contact with the ground. This is what my team is attempting to study. Other storm chasing teams study other things, and there are a lot of us out there. Storm Chasers are everywhere.”
When asked how long he would be chasing storms, Timmer responded by simply saying, “my whole life.”
At approximately 4:30 p.m. on Friday, Timmer and his crew gave up on the predicted supercell and set their bearing on Mississippi. At approximately 11 a.m., on Saturday, Timmer and his crew began tracking an EF-4 in Yazoo County, MS. The tornado hit Yazoo City at approximately 12:30 p.m., killing 10 people, and leaving many people without homes, vehicles, water, and electricity. It is estimated that 700 homes were leveled by the deadly storm.
The deadly Mississippi tornado was reportedly 1.5 miles wide at times, and had a destruction path nearly 150 miles long. Timmer is still on location in Yazoo County assisting the rescue and recovery efforts.
The Storm Chasers camera crew was on location with Timmer while in Falls City. Timmer refused to speculate as to whether or not Falls City would be included in the upcoming season of Storm Chasers. Season 4 of Storm Chasers is currently being filmed and will begin airing this fall.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.