Professional storm chaser Reed Timmer has been spending a lot of time in and near Wyoming lately.
Last week, he was in southeastern Wyoming documenting numerous twisters that touched down in Laramie and Platte counties.
On Wednesday, he was outside of Burns, Wyoming, where baseball-sized hail shattered his windshield around 7 p.m.
Just an hour later, about 20 miles east of the Wyoming border near Kimball, Nebraska, Timmer got what he wanted — a gigantic, shimmering, brown tornado.
“Big time tornado!” Timmer yelled as his “dominator” vehicle roared down a dirt road in an attempt to catch up to the brown twister.
The West Side
Rapidly approaching the churning tornado, Timmer yelled out to his colleague to stay on the road and keep driving toward the chaos.
“We’re good, we’re on the west side of it,” Timmer said, his voice barely audible over the roar of the storm.
Is being west of a tornado a good thing? Apparently so, as they rapidly approached the mayhem without any detection of concern.
“Hold the stream, hold the stream,” he yelled, hoping that his live video would continue to broadcast over Twitter.
The stream held up.
Yards Away
“We’re right beside it!” Timmer said.
No exaggeration. The tornado was a mere yards away now and rotating like it was in slow motion.
Timmer and his colleagues couldn’t have been more excited.
“You gotta be kidding me,” one of his fellow chasers yelled as they said their plan was to “parallel” the storm — which apparently means to drive alongside it.
Intercept
That plan quickly changed to “intercepting” the storm.
Apparently in tornado-chaser lingo, that means to drive directly into the tornado as to catch it, perhaps.
Once they got past the storm, they spotted a road that could put them directly in front of the oncoming storm.
Go the other way and take cover?
Of course not! Take that road and floor it.
“We’re moving in,” Timmer yelled, instructing his colleagues to shut the windows. “It could be powerful."
Then, absolute chaos. But manageable, somehow.
Spitting Manure
Rain. Hail. Lightning. Wind. Manure.
Manure?
"Big time manure in my eyes!" Timmer yelled, perhaps forgetting to take his own advice and close the windows.
Then exaltation. The tornado somehow passed over them. No one was injured. The team ran out of the car celebrating while the video cameras continued to roll.
"Woo-hoo!" they yelled.
One More For The Road
But the celebration was short-lived, because just left of the passing tornado, another twister dipped down.
Call it a night?
Of course, not. Let's go chase that tornado. And they did...
Jimmy Orr can be reached at jimmy@cowboystatedaily.com.
