WILLIAM TAYLOR REID
Auto-bio
Stormbruiser is my web site. It is a place where one can go to view amazing storm images and read storm chase accounts. It’s a place to learn about storm chasing, weather, and climate. And, Stormbruiser is an opportunity for me to share any and all of my passions and interests with the planet. Stormbruiser isn’t intended to be about me, but you will get to know me a bit if you spend some time here. I hope that your visits here are enjoyable, and, of course, in places, chock full of hilarity.
My e-mail address is
wmreid@roadrunner.com
or
bill@stormbruiser.com
The following write-up details some of my schooling and how I got into weather observing and storm chasing. This little autobiography isn’t complete yet, but either is my life. Included at the bottom are some photos of me. If you have a picture of me that you feel should be on this page, then let me have it!
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I was born at about 10 a.m. on May 6, 1958. Or, as I usually say, I was born at a very early age. I am the oldest of six children to Bruce and Dottie Reid. I grew up in the western San Fernando Valley in the City of Los Angeles, CA; mostly in Woodland Hills, but also in Canoga Park and Reseda. I attended St. Bernardine’s grade school in Woodland Hills, Crespi High School in Encino, and California State University, Northridge (CSUN).
As you probably know by now, I am a storm chaser. How in the world does a wee lad from California wind up chasing and documenting some of the most severe weather imaginable? Heck if I know—–it just worked out that way! In high school I was an astronomy buff. My friend had an awesome 10-inch reflector telescope, and we spent countless nights peering into the heavens and looking for the faintest nebulae and galaxies in the star atlas. I went into college as an astronomy/physics major, but took a weather class in my first semester. By my second semester, I had switched my major to Climatology/Geography. Maybe it was all of the calculus and physics in the Astronomy program that intimidated me a little. Maybe it was the lure of studying weather and climate and my love of working with numbers and statistics that pulled me into Climatology.
I loved taking the weather and climatology courses at CSUN. I never really liked going to school, but I must admit now that I enjoyed learning how the atmosphere worked. CSUN had an excellent climatology program, headed by Dr. Arnold Court, my advisor. It was by chance, a total fluke, that I wound up at a school with a highly-respected climatology program. I enrolled at CSUN because it was the nearest four-year college, and I could afford the tuition. It was also about this time, my first year in college (1976), when I was given a rain gage as a Christmas gift. Awesome! Up until this point in my life I had never thought about taking weather measurements or observations. As much as I can recall, I didn’t think about the weather too much growing up. I certainly enjoyed extreme weather. I loved heat waves and thunderstorms. We had plenty of heat waves in the valley, and very few thunderstorms.
By March of 1977 I had purchased a dial max-min thermometer and had posted it on the north side of the house, where I could see it through the kitchen window. This is when I began recording the high and low temperatures and any precipitation every day for my little unofficial station in Woodland Hills. In my weather book I wrote down what the weather was like. I began to pay closer attention to weather forecasts on the TV and in the newspaper, I learned that there were phone numbers I could call for aviation forecasts and local airport observations, and I started listening to NOAA weather radio. In 1978 I put together a cheap Heathkit weather station which included wind instruments, which I mounted on the roof. Why did weather fascinate me? Why did I feel compelled to measure and record all of this stuff? The weather where I lived was decidedly boring and monotonous almost all of the time, it seemed. Storms were few and usually weak. It was sunny and pleasant day after day. My developing passion must have been driven by a general inquisitiveness and fascination with the atmosphere. I needed to know why it was hotter or colder day to day, or hotter or colder or wetter or drier where I lived compared to surrounding places. Woodland Hills seemed like a special place climatologically, as it tended to be hotter in summer and colder in winter than other areas of Los Angeles. I loved recording the weather each day.
By 1980 I had a fancy new Heathkit Digital weather station set up at home, and my Climatology advisor, Dr. Court, loaned me several standard weather instruments which I set up in the backyard! These included a standard-sized cotton region thermometer shelter, a Belfort hygro-thermograph and a Belfort recording weighing rain gage. These instruments provided continuous (and accurate and official) temperature and precipitation data. I phoned in my daily data into the Los Angeles Daily News in 1980, and to the National Weather Service beginning in 1983. Woodland Hills was on the local and national weather map, thanks to me and my school’s generosity.
At school I was immersed in the stacks of climate data in the library. I wrote down all of the daily high and low temperatures from the weather station at Pierce College in the West Valley. I earned my Bachelor’s Degree in 1981 and my Master’s Degree in Climatology in 1987. My thesis was on temperature patterns in the Eastern Mojave Desert, and I researched all of the old records from Death Valley and California’s northern deserts that I could find. I became part of the local and national chapters of the American Meteorological Society, and occasionally gave talks on my Death Valley research and local climate studies.
After college I worked briefly with as a hydrologic technician with the Corps of Engineers, and then was hired by Continental Weather Services, a private weather company in Encino. I did climate studies and some forecasting for Continental Weather, and learned to read the weather maps and forecast charts which arrived on the “Difax” machine printer. Hourly weather observations arrived constantly through the computer. It was the perfect place for a weather nut to work!
This was about the time that I really got in to storm chasing. Let’s back up a little. When I was in grade school, my family’s summer vacation was often a drive to Omaha, Nebraska, to visit aunts and uncles and cousins. On many nights I was up late, staring through the window, watching a spectacular lightning display…or desperately hoping one would develop! When I received my driver’s license I found myself driving towards and into the thunderstorms near Omaha, or out in the desert areas north of Los Angeles. I liked to be in heavy rain, I liked to hear hail slamming the car, and I especially liked lightning and thunder and inky black skies. I can recall experiencing just a handful of decent thunderstorms growing up at home. Some of the Omaha storms scared me a little, but I couldn’t get enough of them. I was storm deprived in California, but I was definitely not obsessed with storms. I was more interested in climatology, and ice hockey, and music, through the 1980s.
I saw a small tornado near Sterling, Colorado, on a trip to Omaha back around August, 1988. I was taking pictures and nervous and excited as can be! This encounter was completely fortuitous and unexpected. An isolated thunderstorm developed along Interstate 76 and the tornado formed a few miles to the north as we drove by. Even though this storm was incredible and I was thrilled to have witnessed a tornado, this was not the event which changed my life. At the time I was not especially into storms and severe weather. Sure, I loved to experience them, but I figured that my encounters with them would just be in these types of situations —- on my occasional trips in the western U.S. and the Great Plains to visit relatives, and the rare thunderstorms near home. I thought that tornados were flukes, and were events which were impossible to predict. I didn’t really understand severe storms, I had never heard of a supercell or a rotating thunderstorm or a storm chaser. I didn’t grow up hoping someday to see a tornado. I didn’t think about them, actually. I certainly never thought that I would see a tornado in my lifetime, even as I turned 30. I just didn’t think about them —- tornadoes didn’t matter to me!
photo credits: Charles Bustamante
left to right: near Cerro Gordo, California, in the Inyo Mountains above Owens Lake, around 1997; near the Simi Fire in Moorpark in October 2003; near Pismo Beach, CA, around 2005; and in southern Death Valley in February, 2005.
photo credit: Marcia Perez
from left to right: Bob Conzemius, William Reid, Keith Brown, Kinney (The Gardener) Adams, and Brian Morganti, on June 1, 2007 near Field, New Mexico
(cell phone) photo credit: Curt Kaplan
July 2007
Brian, Keith and myself an Abilene motel in May 1999 (photo courtesy of Brian Morganti)
Brian and myself in western New Mexico in May, 2007 (photo courtesy of Brian Morganti)
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