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Lead Tours Guides - Jimmy Deguara, BSc, DipED

Jimmy is without doubt Australia's and one of the world's most experienced and respected storm chasers. His passion for severe weather is infectious and Jimmy has appeared on numerous prime time television programs including 60 Minutes, A Current Affair, Today Tonight and Today.

A university graduate with a double major in mathematics and physics, his interest in weather goes back for as long as he remembers. It was the influence of floods and run-off associated with heavy rain which first intrigued him, and the challenge in forecasting led to his interest in thunderstorms, particularly heavy rain and hail. During 1989, a talk by Chuck Doswell, a highly respected US meteorologist / stormchaser, on tornadoes inspired Jimmy to pursue his own dream of chasing tornadoes. Jimmy spends the entire spring / summer period in Australia, and May and June in the United States tracking down supercell thunderstorms and tornadoes with Thunderbolt Tours.

He currently maintains a rain gauge network and he has maintained the interest in severe thunderstorms and weather photography. Of course, storm chasing is also his favourite hobby!

Career Highlight: May 29, 2001

"What happened from here on was a blur. There simply are no words to describe our feelings at this point - something I had never experienced before. This was now beyond the adrenaline stage, it was survival. There was no time to think. Almost automatically, like we had been doing it for years, we paced ourselves with the wall cloud in correct position, watching any developments making decisions like we had a job to do. We were being lured by the storm."

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