About Us

Extreme Tornado Tours was founded by veteran storm chasers Reed Timmer and Chris Chittick to provide weather enthusiasts the opportunity to observe powerful tornadoes from close range, as well as massive hail and sculpted supercell thunderstorms in Tornado Alley. The ETT guides have been chasing storms in Tornado Alley for over a decade, and their extreme tornado research projects have been featured on Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers the last few seasons. If you have an interest in extreme weather, or just hope to add a little excitement to your life, then a tour with our world renowned storm chasers during tornado season is the ideal vacation for you!

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Unparalleled track record

Our team of storm chasers has intercepted an unprecedented number of tornadoes over the last several years, with over 400 tornadoes documented by our veteran storm chasers. Our track record speaks for itself. We offer the absolute best chance of intercepting tornadoes in Tornado Alley during storm season.

Extensive media coverage

You likely have seen our tornado and hurricane footage on Fox News, CNN, NBC, ABC, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, and The Weather Channel. Our storm chasers have conducted live interviews on Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer, the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, The Weather Channel’s Evening Edition, World’s Most Amazing Videos, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and the Today’s Show with Matt Lauer. Our tornado and hurricane footage is some of the most popular and recognizable on the internet, including the highest-rated and most-viewed tornado video clip on Youtube.com (Ellis Co, OK tornado from May 4, 2007).

Degreed Meteorologists

Further distinguishing Extreme Tornado Tours from other tour companies, many of our storm chasing guides are degreed meteorologists, with lead forecaster Reed Timmer graduating with his PhD in meteorology in 2011. This provides us the unique ability to incorporate an educational aspect in our storm chasing tours, and of course helps us maximize your chances of seeing a tornado.

State-of-the-art Technology

Our vehicles are comfortable 15-passenger vans are fully equipped with state-of-the-art tornado tracking technology, including mobile satellite radar, GPS, and mobile Internet, which we make available to our guests with a Wi-Fi access point. We only allow 6 guests per van to maximize your comfort and enjoyment. We also stream live video from our tour vans to our sister site, TornadoVideos.net, where our storm chasing adventures can be viewed in real-time!

Reed Timmer

Title: Co-Owner, Lead Stormchaser
Age: 31
Stormchasing Since: 1997
# of Tornadoes Seen: 330
# of Hurricanes Seen: 12
Closest distance from a tornado: 0 meters

Reed was born and raised in Grand Rapids, MI, and became interested in extreme weather at a very young age. He was also an avid insect, reptile, and amphibian collector and tree identification enthusiast, but decided to pursue his greatest passion and began studying meteorology at the University of Oklahoma in 1998. Reed photographed his first tornado in October 1998, and was addicted to extreme storm chasing ever since. Every spring and summer season, he travels from the Mexican Border to Canada striving to photograph tornadoes from extreme close range (within 1/8 mile), often driving more than 40,000 miles during the spring and summer. Reed's most memorable storm chasing moments include the May 3, 1999 F5 tornado from an overpass near Moore, OK; the Manchester, SD wedge tornado that passed only a few hundred yards from the vehicle on June 24, 2003; the Ellis Co, OK tornado that ripped trees from the ground 100 yards away; and the half-mile wide monster tornado in Manitoba, Canada on June 23, 2007. Reed also documents hurricanes and blizzards, and hopes to expand to typhoons in Asia, Australian tropical cyclones, and Southern Hemisphere tornadoes in the very near future.

During the last few storm seasons, Reed has been featured on the Storm Chasers series on Discovery Channel, while launching extreme tornado research projects such as the tornado intercept project (with the Storm Research Vehicle - aka the Dominator) and the parachute probe-RC plane project. As seen on Storm Chasers, the TVN team successfully deployed a camera/instrument probe into a fast-moving Kansas twister on May 29, 2008, and intercepted five tornadoes during the 2009 season with the Dominator, measuring over 130 mph wind gusts in two of them and losing the driver's side window inside the Aurora, Nebraska tornado on June 17, 2009. Reed graduated with a Bachelors Degree in meteorology in 2002, Masters in 2005, and will complete his Ph.D. in Meteorology in 2010. He will storm chase until the day he dies!!!

Dave Holder

Title: Stormchaser
Age: 30
Stormchasing Since:
# of Tornadoes Seen: 105
# of Hurricanes Seen: 2
Closest distance from a tornado: 0 meters

Dave Holder, 30 years of age and born in England, is one of the most passionate storm chasers in the country. He graduated with a degree in meteorology at the University of Oklahoma in 2010.

Dave moved to the Philadelphia area when he was a small child, and it was here where his passion for weather blossomed. As a kid, he would stay up until early morning hours watching the Weather Channel. Weather became an obsession, watching the local radar continuously when storms were around. In addition to thunderstorms, winter weather events became highlights of Dave's early life. The Storm of the Century in 1993 marked a deep impression upon Dave's psyche.

A carefree and often spontaneous individual, Dave coupled his love of weather with his love of geography and travel. By the time he turned 23 years old, he had visited every state in the country. His love for long road trips produced 8 coast to coast drives and other countless hours in the car from the Mexican border to the Canadian Rockies.

Dave has been chasing since the Spring of 2005, and has witnessed hundreds of tornadoes in multiple states and provinces.

Some of Dave's other interests are poker, football, history, and traveling. He plans to obtain a motorcycle license and a pilot's license in the not-too-distant future.

Shanda Hinnant

Title: Stormchaser
Stormchasing Since: 2008

Shanda was born and raised in Minnesota. Shanda always remembers having a fascination with the weather, but her first experience with a tornado was when she was five years old. A tornado came through the small town of Maple Lake, MN where she lived, and she remembers coming up from the basement and going outside after it hit and seeing the damage it caused to the trees and properties. It was from that day she had always wondered what would be able to cause this damage and why she was not able to see it. Every time she would hear tornado sirens after that, her first instinct was to go outside and try to see this thing called a tornado.

Shanda has a degree in Political Science and Economics from St. Cloud State University, but weather has always been her true interest. She began actually chasing in 2008 and have not stopped since. Other than studying the weather I also enjoy photography and travel.

Kevin Barton

Title: Co-owner, Storm Chaser, Fabricator
Age:48
Storm Chasing Since: 2009
# of Tornado's seen: 29
# of Hurricanes seen: 0
Closest distance from a tornado: 0 meters

Kevin was born in Grand Rapids, MI. While growing up in Michigan, Kevin discovered his singing voice and strong interest in music at the age of 15 and has continued entertaining people for over 30 years now. After years of singing he taught himself how to play the guitar and the harmonica as well. While still performing on stage, Kevin became interested in racing and began building race cars and motorcycles. He was approached by Reed in 2008 in regards to building the Dominator. Kevin and the rest of his building team took the project by storm. The Dominator was built in 10 weeks in the spring of 2009. The team used their knowledge of car building from years of racing and fabricating skills to build a vehicle that could withstand extreme winds inside a tornado and record data that could improve tornado warning systems. Always interested in extreme weather, this was Kevin’s chance to be introduced to the world of storm chasing.

Within the next year he was completely redesigning the Dominator to improve its performance. During this same time the Dominator was tested on Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters” behind a 747 Jet at winds in excess of 250 mph. During the recording Kevin’s only comment was "Thank God it stayed on the ground,” followed by a sigh of relief! The next year he was happy to build Dominator 2, a completely new spin on the Storm Research Vehicle. It was unveiled in May of 2011 and had a lot of success in the second half of the 2011 tornado season. Kevin recounts the April 29th, 2009 tornado near Plainfield, TX where they witnessed twin tornado’s and May 10th, 2010 near Watketa, OK, where multiple vortices were sighted as a few of his most memorable moments while chasing with TVN. This year, 2011, he had two successful intercepts in Dominator One.

Kevin is also the designer of the Extreme Tornado Tours touring vans, and looks forward to bringing some of the excitement from the “Dominator” chase to those experiencing an ETT tour!

Blake Knapp

Storm Chaser, Photographer, Junior Forecasting Captain, Icon
Age: 33
Storm Chasing Since: 2009
# of Tornado's seen: 20
# of Hurricanes seen: 3

Closest distance from a tornado: 0 meters

Blake grew up in West Chester, PA and still calls it home. His first weather-related memory is taking shelter from a tornado warning in the family basement as a young child. He saw his first tornado in 1997, looking out his bedroom window. Though he is based in the northeast, Blake is no stranger to extreme weather. Between 1988 and 1999, there were 17 tornadoes in his county, which helped to solidify his interest in them. Blake has experienced countless snowstorms, blizzards and Nor’easters, but the winters of 1994 and 2011 are the ones that stand out.

Blake’s first experiences in Tornado Alley were as an ETT guest in 2009, and a passion was born. By 2011 Blake was successfully chasing solo and honing his forecasting skills. In the fall of that year, he teamed up with the late Andy Gabrielson on several projects, including building a new chase tour company. When an opportunity to join ETT opened in May of 2012 he seized the opportunity, bringing new ideas and enthusiasm to the team. Lately, Blake has also chased several hurricanes, most notably Irene and Sandy.

Blake has been seen on TV shows like Storm Stories and 20/20, though sometimes with different accents, and his footage has been seen on multiple media outlets. While he enjoys getting as close as safely possible to tornadoes, he loves watching and photographing storm structure, capturing the beauty and mystery of severe storms. As a past tour guest himself, Blake does well explaining some of the complexities of storms in ways new guests can easily understand.