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Thursday brought extreme weather to South Dakota with at least five reports of tornadoes touching down in the Northern Plains. Infamous storm chaser Reed Timmer (PhD) was there and captured surreal footage of what he’s called the ‘most insane tornado intercept ever’ filmed.
Those are STRONG words from Reed Timmer, a man who is arguably the biggest name in storm chasing and was featured years ago on Discovery’s Storm Chasers. He was also famously on the ground for the El Reno tornado of 2013 where the hood of his custom-built ‘Dominator 2′ storm chasing vehicle was ripped off. Timmer rescued Mike Bettes of The Weather Channel during that storm after Bettes’ SUV was lifted off the ground and thrown 200 yards off the U.S. Route 81 road.
So normally when I see ‘Most Insane Tornado Intercept Ever’ on the Internet I think someone is being extremely hyperbolic but when it’s Reed Timmer, I immediately click because I know I’m about to see some crazy storm footage:
My internal dialogue throughout this video went something like this:
2:46 …. That’s way too close for comfort.
2:57 …. WHAT ARE YOU DOING THERE?!
3:44 …. WHY ARE YOU NOT MOVING??
10:34 … Man, storms look so cool sometimes.
Props to him for captioning the video ‘I drove into this tornado shirtless’ but my dude, did you really need to loes the shirt? Either way, Reed Timmer was also sharing updates from the Mound City, South Dakota tornado on X, formerly Twitter, and his updates had the storm chasing community on edge.
At one point, Timmer posted the message “You have to be kidding me with this” without any footage which had many wondering what was going on but he was backing it up quickly with videos. Losing his shirt quickly became a running joke in his replies.
Reed Timmer (PhD) coined this storm “TOTSHOTY: Tornado of the second half of the year” in another post. Last but not least, he shared this image from a fellow storm chaser showing how stunning this storm was from afar, a very different look from when they were up close and personal with the South Dakota tornado:
Top tier supercell structure with a tornado! This is nuts! https://t.co/QHnLDSGFnE
— Reed Timmer, PhD (@ReedTimmerUSA) August 29, 2024
According to a report from Fox Weather, these storms and tornadoes yesterday in South Dakota were powerful to blow a train off the tracks.