When I grow up I want to be a storm chaser…

Photo: Miguel Angel Fariña on Flickr.

Bungee jumping is so past-it in Arizona. If you want a real thrill, then get in your car and follow that tornado.

While other children were dreaming of becoming footballers and firemen, Reed was getting excited about perilous weather forecasts. Twenty years later, he's carved his name out of the trade. Reed is now a successful storm chaser. He lives for and from extreme weather conditions, selling close-up images to the press and taking thrill-seeking tourists on tornado-trails (which cost around USD$2000 per week). And thanks to the particularly turbulent climate conditions of recent times, this season is proving profitable...

May 4, 2007 - Ellis Co, Oklahoma tornado from close range.

Tornado in Northern Kansas on May 29, 2008.

June 24, 2003 - Manchester, New Hampshire wedge tornado.

May 3, 1999 - Force 5 tornado near Moore, Oklahoma State.

Hurricane Katrina from just east of New Orleans, Los Angeles.

"During the 2008 season, we’ve nearly been struck by lightning about 5 times already!"

Reed Timmer is the founder of the site Tornadovideos.net.

For as long as I can remember, I've been obsessed with extreme weather. I decided to pursue my passion and study meteorology at the University of Oklahoma in 1998, and I saw my first tornado that fall in Northern Oklahoma. The following spring, we chased the infamous May 3, 1999 F5 tornado. Ever since, I was hooked on getting up-close to tornadoes, and we've been storm chasing from Mexico to Canada for the last ten years. During the 2008 season, we've nearly been struck by lightning about 5 times already! Several successive cloud-to-ground lightning strikes crashed all around us while we were documenting a developing tornado, with one chaser on our team temporarily losing feeling to his leg!

Over the years, we created a substantial stock footage library of extreme tornado video. We then started TornadoVideos.net in 2003, and added a breaking news blog, live chase tracker, forum, live streaming video, and stock footage page in subsequent years. We license footage to several news media networks, including ABC, NBC, CNN, Fox, The Weather Channel, Japanese TV, Univision, and the Associated Press. We also now have "Extreme Tornado Tours," which conducts storm chasing vacations from April through June, the peak storm season in Tornado Alley.

We offer both six-day and ten-day storm chasing vacation packages, timed perfectly to maximize chances of intercepting tornadoes. We hope to expand to Europe, Asia, and South America in the near future to chase tornadoes and typhoons from around the world."