Photo from discovery.com

You can meet Grand Rapids native Reed Timmer, star of the Discovery Channel’s TV show “Storm Chasers,” on Saturday, December 17, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at O’Connors Shoes, 120 S. Lafayette St., in Greenville. You can mingle with Reed and learn how the Dominator 2 works and about the data its capturing, and hear about Reed’s latest storm chasing adventures. The D2 has been engineered and constructed to collect data and withstand punishment from the interior of the most powerful tornadoes in Tornado Alley (EF4+).

Reed was born and raised in Grand Rapids. He graduated from Forest Hills Central High School in 1998, and received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Meteorology from the University of Oklahoma. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Meteorology from the same university. According to the Discovery Channel, Reed’s first official storm chase was at the age of 13, when he intercepted a severe storm in his front yard and was pelted by golf-ball size hail that destroyed his family’s video camera. Ever since that day, he’s been obsessed with extreme weather and storm chasing, and has documented over 200 tornadoes.