Chasing Tornadoes
Extreme Storm Chasing
On 17 September 2014, Maricopa Community College (MCC) provided a forum where Dr. Shauan Pan, President of the MCC Honors Program, hosted a lecture. Pan invited Reed Timmer, CEO of Weather Fusion, LLC and Extreme Tornado Tours, LLC to present his experiences in storm chasing. Timmer is an extreme weather chaser and one of the few to document hurricane Katrina, which was the most devastating hurricane to strike the U.S. mainland. He has also witnessed over two hundred fifty tornadoes. Timmer is one of the most distinguished storm chasers in the world and is currently working on his Ph.D. in meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. Timmer and his team have built vehicles with the means to observe and collect data as safe as humanly possible. To protect chasers from flying debris, they use 16 gauge steel armor with a reinforced mounted roof to equip their vehicles. They weight over 10,500 lbs. These vehicles are specifically build to withstand the force of a tornado. Additionally, Timmer incorporates a hydraulic lowering shell system that eliminates wind underneath the vehicles. This expensive incorporation further allows the vehicles to be less affected by the incredible force produced by high wind tornadoes, making the vehicle possible to withstand extreme wind. The chasers use a triple windshield wiper system that provides clear viewing of the event, not only for the people inside the vehicle, but also for uninterrupted recording by the cameras. These configurations intensifies the ability to look inside tornadoes and record the activities. Their upgraded research equipment provides streaming current weather reports. Part of their equipment includes parachutes probes that the team launches into tornadoes from the vehicle to capture specific information. The probes collect data on temperature, moisture, pressure, speed, and wind direction. These parachutes probe also collect a three-dimensional x-ray of recovered data within a
On 17 September 2014, Maricopa Community College (MCC) provided a forum where Dr. Shauan Pan, President of the MCC Honors Program, hosted a lecture. Pan invited Reed Timmer, CEO of Weather Fusion, LLC and Extreme Tornado Tours, LLC to present his experiences in storm chasing. Timmer is an extreme weather chaser and one of the few to document hurricane Katrina, which was the most devastating hurricane to strike the U.S. mainland. He has also witnessed over two hundred fifty tornadoes. Timmer is one of the most distinguished storm chasers in the world and is currently working on his Ph.D. in meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. Timmer and his team have built vehicles with the means to observe and collect data as safe as humanly possible. To protect chasers from flying debris, they use 16 gauge steel armor with a reinforced mounted roof to equip their vehicles. They weight over 10,500 lbs. These vehicles are specifically build to withstand the force of a tornado. Additionally, Timmer incorporates a hydraulic lowering shell system that eliminates wind underneath the vehicles. This expensive incorporation further allows the vehicles to be less affected by the incredible force produced by high wind tornadoes, making the vehicle possible to withstand extreme wind. The chasers use a triple windshield wiper system that provides clear viewing of the event, not only for the people inside the vehicle, but also for uninterrupted recording by the cameras. These configurations intensifies the ability to look inside tornadoes and record the activities. Their upgraded research equipment provides streaming current weather reports. Part of their equipment includes parachutes probes that the team launches into tornadoes from the vehicle to capture specific information. The probes collect data on temperature, moisture, pressure, speed, and wind direction. These parachutes probe also collect a three-dimensional x-ray of recovered data within a