This essay by Mike Smith hits home for me, because it parallels my experience in the midwest in 1974. That was a banner year for tornado outbreaks. The April 3rd and 4th super outbreak was a big influence on me.
The Super Outbreak is the largest tornado outbreak on record for a single 24-hour period. From April 3 to April 4, 1974, there were 148 tornadoes confirmed in 13 US states, along a total combined path length of 2,600 miles (4,160 km).
The Super Outbreak of tornadoes of 3–4 April 1974 remains the most outstanding severe convective weather episode of record in the continental United States. The outbreak far surpassed previous and succeeding events in severity, longevity and extent.
Just 4 years later, I was doing television weather. The lessons of 1974 still influence me today, as with Mike, I wanted to make radar a lifesaving tool. My contribution is this personal doppler radar program.
June 8th – The Day Television Weather Grew Up
By Mike Smith, Certified Consulting Meteorologist
Today is the anniversary of a day I will never forget. In Warnings I call it “The Day Television Weather Grew Up.” I was working at WKY TV (now KFOR TV, NBC) in Oklahoma City. There was a massive tornado outbreak in central Oklahoma. For the first time in history, we broadcast a tornado live.
The photo above shows the televised tornado as it was developing over eastern Oklahoma county. But, while dramatic, that wasn’t the most important thing that occurred that day.
Even though we had only primitive black and white radar (photo below shows the tornado as it approached Oklahoma City), we were able to track the storms in real time and get a warning out in advance of every single tornado (13) in our viewing area. At times, four tornadoes were simultaneously on the ground. We focused exclusively on the tornadoes (rather than the additional storms — occurring near the tornadoes — that were only causing large hail), told viewers exactly where they were and exactly where they were headed. That may not seem surprising now, but it had never been done before. Just two months before (April 3), tornadoes swarmed across the Ohio Valley. There are several web sites with radio and TV recordings of that day and it is obvious that, most of the time, the broadcasters didn’t know where the tornadoes were.
As evidence of how revolutionary this was, the TV station received 75 cards and letters telling us, over and over, “You told us a tornado was coming, we took shelter, and our home blew away moments later. Thank you, you saved our lives!” It was overwhelming reading them.
The editorial cartoon was published three days later.The story might have ended there but for two TV news consultants that visited us a week or so later. TV news consultants then, and now, take the “best practices” of TV stations and adapt them to their specific clients. (Ever wonder why there is an “Eyewitness News” in just about every city? Consultants is the answer. They found, years ago, that people liked that name for newscasts.)
They interviewed me about what we did on June 8. They spoke with our news director and news staff. I own a book about TV news, written in 1970, that devotes exactly two paragraphs to TV weather. The consultants’ audience research determined that viewers wanted more and better weather coverage.
From about 1975 to 1980, meteorologists took over from weather “personalities” in most cities. Color radar became a staple of television. Satellite images and time lapse cloud photography made their debuts.
Of course, all of this would have eventually occurred. But, June 8, 1974, was the day TV weather grew up.
The Super Outbreak is the largest tornado outbreak on record for a single 24-hour period. From April 3 to April 4, 1974, there were 148 tornadoes confirmed in 13 US states, including Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and New York; and the Canadian province of Ontario. It extensively damaged approximately 900 square miles (1,440 square kilometers) along a total combined path length of 2,600 miles (4,160 km).[1]
The Super Outbreak of tornadoes of 3–4 April 1974 remains the most outstanding severe convective weather episode of record in the continental United States. The outbreak far surpassed previous and succeeding events in severity, longevity and extent.
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The electric nature of weather events is unquestionable.
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=9eq6g3aj
Anthony, I remember the day when you reported tornadoes in Butte County on KHSL during some unusually severe weather when I lived in Chico in the early 1990’s You must have had more weather to report than would fit in your allocated time slot, because you barked something to that effect to someone behind camera who must have been pressing you to wrap it up. As a viewer, I was certainly more interested in the tornadoes than the next commercial break or the sports segment! Cheers to you, old friend.
REPLY: Thanks Eric. The people there that ran the show often were more slaves to format than to content. If you noticed what I said on the air, you can imagine what I said afterwards. For the record, if we have tornadoes and thunderstorms threatening lives and property, I don’t give a rats ass if the commercial break gets pushed back or the sports guy has to drop a story. Public service trumps format every day of the week and twice on Sundays. – Anthony
So we have had years before all this warming that produced a lot of funnel clouds. We were told warming would increase it.
How much do wind turbine farms interfere with weather radar in the Midwest?
I have always wondered why in the world do those people affected every year by tornadoes do not build their homes out of concrete and aerodynamically shaped so as to withstand those wind forces. Why? Or is it part of the game to pay insurances to rebuild houses every time?
I was there in Cincinnati [4 April 1974] . My wife was a school teacher and I went to get her.
The radio plotted out the course of a huge funnel cloud and I was directly in it’s path. I was just passing an apartment building.
I took a right turn and went to my wife’s school and hid in an inside room along with the principal. When the storm was over we went past the apartment building I referred to earlier and it had no roof.
That night was just as scary. We heard roaring like a freight train a couple of times and golf ball size hail which I am told is quite normal in a tornado.
I remember driving up to Xenia Ohio a day or 2 later. It looked like it had been carpet bombed.
REPLY:We were only miles apart. I can remember the live remote video on WCPO channel 9 (perhaps the first ever of its kind) of the tornado as it crossed the Ohio river at Addyston. I can remember Al Schottelkotte looking like the world had ended and with some hint of fear in his voice. That day, and the television that surrounded it, had a profound effect on me. – Anthony
Cheers to Mike for saving so many lives and pioneering exact storm warnings!
@ur momisugly Enneagram says:
June 8, 2010 at 11:29 am
I have always wondered why in the world do those people affected every year by tornadoes do not build their homes out of concrete and aerodynamically shaped so as to withstand those wind forces. Why? Or is it part of the game to pay insurances to rebuild houses every time?
Good question. Since I live in the middle of “Dixie Alley”, which has more tornadoes per year (average) than any other part of the US, I’ll try to tell you why I live here in one of those non-concrete, non-aerodynamic, homes. Because this land we live on has been in the family for over 100 years. Because of the cost. Because of regional design culture. Because of a understanding of the risk and a willingness to accept it.
For those same reasons people in flood zones don’t build to accommodate flooding in many cases, or we build homes on the slopes of volcanoes that won’t withstand an eruption, build a brick house on a fault line, or live in the middle of a mega city that depends on a monstrous flow of inputs and outputs to exist as a habitable zone at all. And so on.
People have an innate sense of risk, and even tho they may not understand the mathematics and logic of formal risk assessment, we more often than not make the right choices. If we made the wrong choices more often, we would still be living in caves. Finally, this rock is inherently unsafe, chaotic, and presents all life with a daily battle to the death. In spite of this, we persevere, and thrive. Go figger. 🙂
Enneagram said on June 8, 2010 at 11:29 am:
Why not just cut to the chase and build underground homes? Saves the hassle of running to an underground tornado shelter. Better have at least three major entryways to allow for the possibility of blockage by some windswept lightweight wreckage like a Honda Civic.
Really, “Mother Nature” continues to do her level best to kill us off when we are on the surface, and the energy “wasted” by heating from freezing surface temps to cooling from blistering sunlight-driven surface temps is rather excessive. Truly environmentally-minded people should give up on surface structures. What do you really lose anyway, save a beautiful showpiece you can park the Prius in front of to advertise your “green credentials.” Wouldn’t a lovely garden over where your home is be more impressive?
Anthony,
A clear version of the cartoon above …..
http://www.leekington.com/images/boobTube4.jpg
I don’t know about ‘aerodynamic’ houses; they can’t, surely, be wind cheaters from every direction, can they? As a tornado passes to the east the wind direction is 180deg from a twister passing to the west, is it not?
I am on firmer ground with ‘underground’ living, though; having two friends who have tried the troglodyte lifestyle. The first drawback is the dificulty and disproportionate expense of stopping groundwater from forcing its way in; the second is that many people find that, after a while, the lack of a view of the weather etc. gives them an increasing sense of claustropobia. There are many troglodyte homes along the Loire Valley, but they are falling into disrepair and being vacated as modern above ground homes become more available.
I grew up in Green Lake County, Wisconsin, the north west corner of “Tornado Alley – USA”. I saw my first tornado briefly touch down on the surface of Big Green Lake (technically a ‘water spout’) at the age of 7 or 8. Many years later, in July 1994, we had to work with chainsaws for half a day, clearing tornado downed trees from a church parking lot, so we could have a funeral gathering for my father. Miraculously, the church itself was completely unscathed.
There were many tornadoes in surrounding areas, in the years between. We lived more than 60 miles from the nearest TV transmission tower and TV reception for weather reports in most of rural Wisconsin, even with a ‘deep fringe’ antenna and a rotor, was dicey at best in severe weather conditions. Local radio from Ripon WI (18 miles) was a more reliable feed, but only providing ‘tornado watch’ (could happen) or ‘tornado warnings’ (one hit, over there!) which provided little tracking information until after the fact! Our best defense was ‘batten down the hatches’ on the farm buildings and livestock, gather in the farmhouse, and post watchers at the south and west facing windows on the 2nd floor!
I also remember using a TV tuning technique (the ‘Weller Method’) that was purported to detect a tornado within ~ 20 miles of so. You tuned to channel 13 first and turned the brightness control down to the point where the TV image was nearly but not quite all black. Then you turned to channel 2. Lightning would show as horizontal white streaks on the almost black screen. If the picture became bright enough to be seen, or the screen brightened to an generally even light, it signaled a tornado in the area. Time to head for the basement! It did seem to work on one or two occasions, at least with our old black and white, tube chassis TV and antenna set up. We kept lookout from the upper floor windows anyway and headed to the basement when things looked serious or the TV screen ‘went white’!
Enneagram – which way should I point my aerodynamically shaped concrete house, to effectively align it with the tightly rotational vortex of +200 mph winds in an average tornado? I have seen concrete block buildings reduced to just a ragged remnant of the bottom course of blocks by tornadoes (Barneveld post office, 1984, if my memory is correct) and 4 foot diameter burr oak trees twisted off through the main trunk like celery. The sudden pressure differentials, the tightly rotating high speed winds, combined with the massive load of flying debris can batter down most structures, if they are hit. The only safe refuge from a direct hit of such forces is below ground, in the closest thing to a bomb shelter that one can find.
“Why not just cut to the chase and build underground homes? Saves the hassle of running to an underground tornado shelter. Better have at least three major entryways to allow for the possibility of blockage by some windswept lightweight wreckage like a Honda Civic.”
Ha, that is a great idea next to all those low rivers that flood every 10 years!! 🙂
While it is annoying when the TV stations break into season finales over an overactive gust on the other side of town, I’ve always appreciated when I’m scared during a bad storm to be able to turn the TV on to an active live update on the situation.
Someone built a dome shaped concrete tornado proof home near Pamplico, SC. IIRC its significantly more expensive than a conventional home and has yet to get hit by a tornado.
a google view of it here
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Pamplico,+SC&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=63.600521,55.810547&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Pamplico,+Florence,+South+Carolina&ll=34.04575,-79.536311&spn=0.002071,0.001703&t=h&z=19
Curiousgeorge & kadaka (KD Knoebel):
Several years ago I saw a kind of building system which made U shaped (and other)concrete parts 3″ thick,with a screen steel core, that could be assembled to make rooms, etc.
Those parts were manufactured continuously, like concrete waterpipes, so its cost would be lower.
However what you say makes me remember the doubts Atila had when invading Rome, as he thought such a big cement city (Romans invented cement) was a big cementery that they had to show respect for. Of course, only inmortals would need an almost inmortal house.
OT: Times Magazine re Arctic Ice:
I am sure that there is a recent response on this board to this article but I have not seen it. Can anyone give me direction as to where to look for responsible response:
Going Green
Melting Arctic Ice: What Satellite Images Don’t See
From Jan Times Magazine
Many thanks in advance.
Mike… I was the chief meteorologist at a television station in Grand Rapids, Michigan in April 1974. Fortunately for us all the tornadoes stayed just to our south and southeast in that super outbreak. But I well remember broadcasting a severe thunderstorm warning for our county from the National Weather Service when our old AVQ-10 radar was showing us the storm was already in the next county to the east. It inspired our general manager to upgrade our radar system.
Consultants did indeed help get the word out that local TV stations could get more timely information out to the public than what was available from the National Weather Service. However, I think television consultants have ultimately been responsible, at least in part, for the slow death of television news. You not only have an Eyewitness news in most markets but you have almost identical newscasts in most markets. If it works in one town, why not in all towns? At least so they thought.
I had been the number one meteorologist in my market for almost 20 years when one day a consultant walked into the weather office and without even saying hello, began telling me I was doing the weather all wrong. Their “surveys” from other markets showed people wanted weather presented in a different way. Even though I had been in the area long enough to have a good feel for what people wanted in that town, they told me I was wrong–over and over again.
After 40 years in the business, with 20 of them fighting consultants, I quit. It is interesting to note today from friends still in the business, the trend is now back to presenting more of what I felt was important years ago. But I haven’t watched a local television newscast in over two years and don’t miss it one bit.
Before this post, if asked I’d have placed this innovation much earlier, but I’ve spent my life in Minnesota where the weather report segments of the nightly local news were always more serious business than in most other parts of the country, at least based on comments from visitors from other places I recall from my early years. The usual response to those comments was to point out that around here on any given day it was a definite possibility that the weather could do something that could kill you if you weren’t paying attention. I’ve collected a large enough personal collection of episodes of both hypo and hyperthermia, black ice induced carnival rides in spinning automobiles, hours spent stuffed in a snow bank hoping the gas in the tank was sufficient to keep the heater going until someone happened along to pull us out, flash floods, lightening strikes, falling trees, downed electric lines, etc. to realize that line wasn’t nearly the joke we usually meant it to be.
Around here the better weather guys often shared a level of public admiration that rivaled that of the big buck news anchors and with good reason. The dramatic and continuing improvements in accuracy and reliability of severe weather forecasts have saved untold numbers of people and although it is not credited often enough the work that has been and continues to be done by the meteorological community deserves all our gratitude.
Cost is certainly a factor.
Another is while very damaging a tornado is usually very localized in its effects. Tornadoes are much less predictable than a flood or a hurricane and most of us who have lived in hurricane alley all our lives have never seen one.
Now federal flood insurance, that’s a scam. If you live in a flood plain, you can only get flood insurance from the government. Why? Because no private insurance company is stupid enough to insure your property.
@Enneagram: I remember seeing some photos of Jarrell, TX in national geographic some years ago after an F5 hit the town. All that was left were concrete slabs. I live in North Central TX so there is a small risk of my house being destroyed by a big twister. But I think there is a much greater chance of me dying in a vehicular accident and yet I still get in cars. On the other hand, I do have enough concern for tornadoes to have avoided living in a trailer park. Something funny, though: When the sirens go off, the family huddles in the bathroom under a mattress and screams at me because I’m running outside hoping to see the twister. =)
April 1974. How does that fit into your IPCC global-warming increasing severe weather forecasts?
Oh wait, it doesn’t. Never mind.
Congrats, Mike. Few people get the chance to be in the right place at the right time with the right tools and do anything like what you and your crew did that day. I’m sure those appreciation letters were incredibly sweet.
Enneagram June 8, 2010 at 11:29 am
In the immortal words of Gilda Radner “It’s always something.”
I live in Fairfax Virginia, far from any tornado alley. Some years back one bounced and skipped over Centreville and dropped several trees in my neighborhood, one through a neighbor’s dining room ceiling. There was so much damage locally that we were without power for four days.
Of course, why anyone in their right mind would choose to live near the San Andreas Fault is a bit beyond me. 🙂
The Super Outbreak of April 4, 1974 was terrifying. I was just a kid–10 years old–in Columbus. As the skies grew darker my older sister received a phone call from her boyfriend at work. A tornado had been spotted southwest of us. Adrenaline started to pump. My parents weren’t home. I have a vivid memory of us running around the house, opening windows slightly. At that time meteorologists instructed people to open their windows to equalize the house’s interior pressure with the storm’s pressure. Otherwise, we were told, the house might explode. More terrifying stuff for a 10-year-old kid. We headed for the basement and listened as a vicious storm blew through. Fortunately, that’s all we experienced. However, the folks in Xenia, not far to the southwest, weren’t so lucky.
That was a crazy year for tornadoes. I remember taking shelter in the basement quite frequently that year. And of course, we didn’t have tornado sirens until after the Xenia disaster.
Nuke says:
June 8, 2010 at 1:03 pm
“Now federal flood insurance, that’s a scam. If you live in a flood plain, you can only get flood insurance from the government. Why? Because no private insurance company is stupid enough to insure your property.”
The only thing FED Flood does for you is pay to rebuild the structure. Don’t even imagine that your belongings are covered. It is a scam. The way it’s pitched, you’d think that you were getting coverage for belongings.
IMO, to buy a house, you need to know the 500 year flood plain. Then build 5-10 ft above it. In Houston, you probably will wind up living in the second and third floors, no matter where you live. Am I living like that? Are you nuts, that’s expensive!
“TV weather” wasn’t alone in growing up as a result of the 1974 outbreak.
The destruction of Xenia and it’s neighbors gave a huge boost to the
regional realization that those cheap little Radio Shack weather radios
with NOAA alerts could be life savers here in Ohio.
NOAA also got an increase in staffing in our area which lasted until
the Reagan/Bush efforts to privatize “public” services, and in
particular weather observation/analysis in the 1980s.
I was a member of an Ohio public employee union back then. The
union created a non-political “Helping Hand” fund to aid members
and their families in the Xenia area. There were more 50/50 raffles,
bake sales and donation drives than you could shake a stick at. The
fund gradually evolved into a general “help” fund by 1980. (Thanks
to big Les Best from the Ohio Soldiers and Sailors home.)
As Mike Smith noted, television stations in Ohio have since then
enthusiastically embraced the newer, improved forms of doppler radar
and satellite imaging. There seems to be fewer prom queens or sports
announcers reporting the weather and more NWS accredited folks
covering a “scientific” beat.
Cable TV in our area even supports the standard NOAA broadcast on one
channel (with local public service “community” notes and postings), one
channel with nothing but near real time NEXRAD radar images, as well
as the Weather Channel.
Sadly, the Weather Channel has taken a step backward in the past
two years with it’s multitude of various time-filling infotainment
productions of “Storm Stories”, “When Weather Changed History”,
“Extreme whatever…” and the like.
I’m fairly sure the sophistication of today’s “TV Weather” has
gone hand in hand with a higher level of knowledge on the part
the viewers. It’s one of the background factors holding AGW
claims and doomsday prognostications to a higher standard
than it’s advocates anticipated.