Reed Timmer

Growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan - notorious for massive snow storms - gave me a early introduction to extreme weather, but my first official storm chase was at the age of 13, when I intercepted a severe storm in my front yard and was pelted by golf-ball size hail that destroyed the family video camera. Ever since that day I’ve been obsessed with extreme weather and storm chasing, but was preoccupied for several years with other natural science adventures

After becoming the national champion in the tree identification event at the 1996 Science Olympiad, I decided to pursue my true passion and began studying meteorology at the University of Oklahoma in 1998. I photographed my first tornado in October of 1998, and documented the massive F5 tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma on May 3, 1999 from underneath an overpass as the mile-wide wedge was bearing down on my location. Other than getting covered by mud, the F5 tornado left me unscathed and even more obsessed with extreme storm chasing. Ever since that day, I’ve been driving over 50,000 miles every year from the Mexican Border to Canada and have captured over 200 tornadoes on film.

In 2003 I started TornadoVideos.net, a company devoted to extreme storm chasing photography and research, with over 50 storm chasing teams streaming live video through our website and collecting data in Tornado Alley every spring. During our first season of Storm Chasers last year, we successfully deployed the 300 pound TVN tornado probe in the path of a fast-moving twister in Kansas, and capturing High Definition video from inside the tornado circulation.

During the off-season, we decided to take it to the next level, and developed an armored radar vehicle (TVN Dominator) intended to measure the vertical wind speeds next to strong tornadoes. In addition to storm chasing year-round, I' m currently working toward a PhD in meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. I’ll be storm chasing until the day that I die!!