00:00First of all, we just want to ask who you are and what you do, really, as a starting point.
00:05Yeah, I'm Reid Timmer, and I'm a meteorologist and a storm chaser.
00:08Perfect. And do you do that sort of in America? Is it sort of like everywhere you go, or is it one place in particular?
00:15I do it everywhere I go, but mostly in America.
00:18Right, okay.
00:18With Tornado Alley there and the hurricanes, but I've chased tornadoes down in Argentina.
00:23Oh, right.
00:24And I've chased hurricanes down in the Caribbean and Mexico.
00:26And I've even studied abroad out at Reading University here, and I chased a storm on foot that had a mention of a tornado potential when I was there about 25 years ago.
00:37Okay.
00:38With an exchange program with the University of Oklahoma and the University of Reading.
00:41Brilliant. That's really good.
00:42But this is the first time I've been back to the UK in 25 years since then.
00:47So that brings me on to my next question. Why are you on the Isle of Man? What's the reason why you came here?
00:51Well, my mom and I are tracking down our ancestors, and we're working with Nikki here at Albany House.
00:57She is an expert on the history here and families and records and basically an expert on everything.
01:05And she's been guiding us around, and we found the church pew of our ancestors, the Kilias and Clarks.
01:11Brilliant.
01:11And also found their gravestones, and it looked like they were buried on top of a Viking mound, which was interesting.
01:20Yeah, of course.
01:20But she's found a lot of documents as well that shows the family way back here.
01:26So she's really into genealogy as well.
01:30Right. You've had a lot of help then from the locals.
01:33Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Especially Nikki. Nikki's been...
01:37And have you had a way of documenting what you've been up to? Have you sort of taken photos and have you done, like, vlogs or videos?
01:43Oh, yeah. I always shoot video and photos of beautiful scenery and weather when it's happening.
01:49So when we landed, we had a big hoolie.
01:52A big windbag.
01:52Big hoolie, yeah.
01:53So when we landed, it was pretty bouncing, but that was exciting for me.
01:58Probably had 60 or 70 mile an hour winds.
02:00Yeah.
02:01So I definitely shifted into storm chase mode instinctively.
02:04Yeah, of course. Yeah. Naturally, yeah.
02:06But then, yep, we had a nice thunderstorm warning here.
02:10I saw some grapple up on the skylights, and that's small hail.
02:15So when you see the presence of that, it means you can get lightning.
02:18Oh, okay. So you got a bit excited there.
02:20Yeah.
02:20I got a little tickle in my bread basket.
02:23Yeah.
02:24But it's been awesome out here. It's been a trip of a lifetime.
02:27Yeah. And like, obviously, like it's been here, you've had a lot of help.
02:32Have you found that people are generally quite nice in the Isle of Man?
02:34People have been quite accommodating.
02:36Oh, yes. Yeah, I met Gary with Gary's Weather Group.
02:39He's been awesome.
02:39He's been showing me around and introducing me to all the weather enthusiasts here,
02:43and he even set up a little speaking event down in Pio.
02:46Yes, he did on Friday night.
02:47Yeah.
02:48How did that go? Was it good?
02:49It went great.
02:49Yeah, there was a kid named Joe Nado that came all the way up from near London.
02:54He drove 14 hours, took the ferry across.
02:56Oh, wow. Amazing.
02:56And, yeah, it was great to see him.
02:59I just shot a video for him on Cameo for the holidays.
03:03Oh, brilliant.
03:03A Christmas video.
03:04That's really good.
03:04It's such a small world.
03:06Yeah, yeah.
03:07You've got quite a large following on social media, haven't you?
03:09Is it quite a lot of followers you've got?
03:11Yeah, but I've been storm chasing for almost 30 years now.
03:14Oh, really?
03:14So if you do anything long enough, eventually people will start.
03:17Yeah, of course.
03:18Yeah, yeah.
03:18But, yeah, we've been trying to, we live stream our storm chases and everything for learning purposes,
03:24and we're trying to do like a live broadcast from the Dominator.
03:28Okay.
03:29And so when we chase down the tornadoes, we live stream it so people can see if there's a tornado on the ground
03:34and they can take shelter if they need to.
03:36But we're also shooting rockets into the tornadoes, little miniaturized sensors.
03:40Brilliant.
03:40Just like the movie Twister.
03:42Yes.
03:42So the Isle of Man, do you ever think you're going to come back?
03:45Oh, yeah.
03:45Again at some point?
03:46I'm going to come back.
03:46Yeah, I really recharged here.
03:49I was so burned out from like the last three years of storm chasing.
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