Interview with Dr. Reed Timmer on Storm Chasing, Engineering and the Future of weather science.

What stood out to me was his statement, “there are not enough jobs going around for those in the weather community.” As I said in my recent editorial about weather, I don’t think we have nearly enough people in these types of jobs. When natural disasters hit, all of life’s trappings we have mean nothing. A split-second means life or death. We shouldn’t scrimp, save, cut corners and downsize in these areas of the sciences. Why we do that is a debate for another time, for sure.

Reed Timmer (RT) is just like he is in the film Never Stop Chasing. The overwhelming enthusiasm and knowledge in the weather sciences is infectious. He will make you want to change professions.

One discussion we had that I didn’t record, but I think it’s worth sharing. I asked RT how tall is a tornado. Typically, we see the tornado funnel, that part, right up to the bottom of the mesocyclone – how tall is that? 1500 to maybe 5000 feet tall is possible. However, the mesocyclone that produced the tornado could reach heights of 50000 feet. RT talked about the many factors that change that, of course, but that’s a good ballpark. I suspect that the OTUS Project team could probably verify that statement.

I did the best I could to suppress the wind noise. Future reference: if you are going to conduct an important interview – get inside somewhere.

Fun fact: I asked RT what his favorite sandwich was: a Reuben. Know who else said the same thing? Bertrand Lacoste-Bourgeacq, former CEO of Solidworks at Dassault Systèmes. I asked the same thing during an interview at Solidworks World, which some of you may not know was renamed to 3D Experience World.