Into the Storm: Violent Tornadoes, Killer Hurricanes, and Death-defying Adventures in Extreme We ather - Hardcover

Timmer, Reed

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525951938 ISBN 13: 9780525951933

Publisher: Dutton, 2010

Synopsis

Reed Timmer, a star of the top rated Storm Chasers on the Discovery Channel is one of the most successful and most extreme storm chasers in the world. His is a job that requires science and bravado, knowledge and instinct just to survive, never mind excel. Now, in Into the Storm, he takes readers inside the terrifying and awe-inspiring world of big weather.

Published to coincide with the fourth season's premiere, Into the Storm is Timmer's dramatic account of his extraordinary profession. Featuring stories of the three-hundred-plus extreme tornados, hurricanes, or blizzards that Timmer has watched ring-side over the last decade-storms that include the killer F5 tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma, in May 1999; the unprecedented, devastating storm surge of Hurricane Katrina; and the little-studied but enormously powerful storm systems in places like Canada and Argentina. As a Ph.D. candidate in meteorology, Timmer is after more than just an adrenaline rush-his stories feature fascinating insights into the science of storms, and how the data he is collecting will could possibly save lives. With a firsthand perspective on the storm-chasing community, Timmer also takes readers inside this world, examining his controversial obsession and the ethical debates it sparks.
Featuring the same you-are-there immediacy that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors to Timmer's web site tornadovideos.net, every month, Into the Storm is one wild-and informative-ride.

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About this title

About the Author

Reed Timmer is one of the most successful and daring storm chasers in the world. Not only has he intercepted over 250 tornadoes and a dozen powerful hurricanes during the last decade, Timmer is also one of the few people in the field to document both an F5 tornado (the strongest level possible) and the most devastating hurricane in U.S. history—Hurricane Katrina. He stars on one the of Discovery Channel’s most popular series, Storm Chasers (19.3 million viewers in season 2). Timmer has also appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Early Show, CNN and been featured in documentaries and on other television shows (“When Nature Strikes,” “Full Force Nature”). Every YouTube video he posts gets hundreds of thousands of views. He will graduate with a Ph.D. in Meteorology from the University of Oklahoma in 2010. Timmer is a disaster educator, and conducts storm spotter seminars for the National Weather Service, emergency managers, and the general public. He lives just outside Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Reviews

Long before he was one of the stars of the TV series Storm Chasers, Timmer was no stranger to the thrill and danger of storm chasing. Ever since he was in college in the late 1990s, studying meteorology, he was drawn to tornadoes, hurricanes, and other big-weather phenomena. This book, which will unavoidably remind some readers of the movie Twister, is a mixture of autobiography and edge-of-your-seat adventure. Timmer tells us with almost breathless enthusiasm about tracking Hurricane Floyd as it approached the U.S. in 1999; about following Katrina in 2005 and helping its victims in the aftermath; and about, in 2000, barely escaping a potentially lethal hailstorm. The author also takes us through the history of storm chasing, which began with a University of Oklahoma project in the early 1970s in which meteorology students filmed tornadoes to learn how they behaved. For fans of “extreme weather” adventures, this is a must-read. --David Pitt

Edition details

• Publisher: Dutton
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0525951938
• ISBN 13: 9780525951933
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288