Reed Timmer's top three "Gizmoments"

Storm chaser Dr. Reed Timmer counts down his most memorable storm chases with his loyal companion Gizmo.

Transcript

00:00 Definitely one of the biggest moments we had when we were storm chasing was in McCook, Nebraska in 2019.

00:06 "Oh no, it's in the wind!"

00:08 About May 17, and that was a really active tornado year as well, Gizmo had a little pink cast.

00:13 She had a peg-leg cast because she happened to have broken a bone in one of her paws.

00:18 And we were chasing that tornado and it developed right on top of us.

00:21 And we were actually in the Dominator 3, our armored storm chasing vehicle.

00:25 We were just outside of it looking up at the storm and the beautiful structure.

00:28 And then it touched down right in a plowed field just to our south.

00:32 And manure was lofted up, there was a big dirt cloud coming right at us.

00:36 And the dirt cloud, the tornado, ended up hitting us directly when we were outside of the vehicle.

00:40 My AccuWeather hat went flying off to the north.

00:43 And I ended up protecting Gizmo in my bread basket, just holding her like that as the rear inflow jack came in.

00:49 Gizmo was totally, totally fine from that situation and I was covered from head to toe in manure.

00:55 And the second one was a big hail producer in the Pecos Valley of Texas. That was in 2020.

01:00 [Gizmo barking]

01:05 And that one, a big wall of baseball-sized hail came in. We call it gorilla hail.

01:09 And it blew out most of my windows, cracked every single window.

01:13 The back windows were all blown out.

01:15 And Gizmo was actually pretty upset with me after that storm chase. She doesn't like the hail.

01:19 [Gizmo barking]

01:29 Probably the biggest chase Gizmo has ever been on was Category 5 Hurricane Michael.

01:34 And she rode through the eye wall with me.

01:36 Right now I'm still on Panama City Beach, standing in front of all kinds of damage that we are seeing just like this.

01:43 We are providing that coverage for AccuWeather in Panama City Beach, right on the eastern tip there.

01:48 And we probably had winds gusting over 150 miles an hour.

01:51 Gizmo enjoyed the whole thing. We had the sunroof open because the wind was so strong, none of the rain would fall into the vehicle.

01:58 And Gizmo loved every moment of it.

02:00 moment ever.