re: Reed Timmer is a certified nut

quote:

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I used to love watching Josh Wurman’s disdain for Reed. Josh had all the expensive research equipment, but Reed was twice the chaser that Josh was, and Josh clearly hated him for it.

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One thing that didn't come across on that show, and has obviously progressed even more since then, is Reed's knowledge and ability/skill to read a radar. I didn't even realize how good Reed is on radar until the past few years when he started doing some livestream storm/radar coverage when he wasn't chasing.

A lot of times he doesn't even need Velocity to know and thoroughly understand what is going on in a storm. He can just look at Reflectivity and see it, even with unusual or complex storms. That isn't an impossible skill, and generally comes with experience from hours and hours of radar watching, but when you couple it with that innate ability to just KNOW what a storm is going to do that he has you get a person who could work any position in meteorology and be damn good at it.

It turns out that "sixth sense" and his experience is perfect for storm chasing. Add into all of that his willingness to do what it takes and the fact that he is the only person reliant upon himself (he has no one to hold him back) and he's the perfect chaser. He's damn good at what he does. I've said before that I haven't always liked Reed, but I respect him.

I will say that I don't think his forecasting is the best out there. He has a couple of solid rules that he seems to follow that limit his flexibility at times. He costs himself some due to that, but he makes up for it whenever he nails a forecast.