Storm Warning: The Story of a Killer Tornado

240 Pages·2008·1.06 MB·English

by  Nancy Mathis

TOUCHSTONE
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Copyright © 2007 by Nancy Mathis All rights reserved, including the right of
reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
T and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
OUCHSTONE
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mathis, Nancy.
Storm warning : the story of a killer tornado / Nancy Mathis.
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Tornadoes—Oklahoma—Oklahoma City—History—20th century. 2.
Tornado warning systems—Oklahoma. 3. National disaster warning systems—
United States. I. Title.
QC955.5.U6M38 2007
363.34'923097663809049—dc22 2006051237
ISBN-13: 978-1-41653921-6
ISBN-10: 1-4165-3921-2
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For my mother
The close-knit world of the tornado and severe thunderstorm
forecaster often seems somewhat demented to those not
knowledgeable in this discipline. This apparent derangement is
based on our seemingly ghoulish expressions of joy and
satisfaction displayed whenever we verify a tornado forecast.
This aberration is not vicious; tornadoes in open fields make us
happier than damaging storms and count just as much for or
against us. We beg your indulgence, but point out the sad truism
that we rise and fall by the blessed verification numbers. There
is a fantastic feeling of accomplishment when a tornado forecast
is successful. We are really nice people but odd.
—T C . R C. M ,
HE LATE OL OBERT ILLER
U.S. A F
IR ORCE METEOROLOGIST
And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and
smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young
men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell
thee.
—J
OB, I:19
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1
NATURE’S ATOM BOMB
2
A METEOROLOGICAL STAR
3
A TORNADO FORECAST
4
SEARCHING FOR CLUES
5
THE TORNADO DETECTIVE
6
PRIORITY ONE
7
HIDING FROM THE BEAR
8
INSIDE THE BEAR’S CAGE
9
MR. TORNADO SEES HIS FIRST
10
A TWISTER’S JOURNEY
11
VORTEX
12
THE TWISTER’S AFTERMATH
13
SEEING THE WINDS
14
A TORNADO’S GRIP
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
O
each spring, an elderly American Indian woman would
N THE FIRST WARM DAY OF
grab a hoe and a flashlight and head down into the storm cellar. This six-foot-
square concrete bunker doubled as a frost-free refrigerator for the canned beans,
peaches, and assorted other fruits and vegetables she had harvested the previous
fall. Wielding the hoe like a makeshift guillotine, she cleared the room of any
hibernating rattlesnakes, copperheads, or other small creatures that might have
found their way into the shelter during the winter.
With the cellar swept clean, the spiderwebs and animal carcasses removed,
my grandmother was now ready for the tornadoes and thunderstorms that would
surely come in April, May, and June. Well, almost. She had one more weapon in
her arsenal. At the first sign of a dark cloud rumbling in from the east, she would
take an axe, point it at the clouds, and swing the blade hard into the ground,
certain that this bit of native magic would cause the storm cloud to split and keep
us safe from the tornadoes. I always suspected there was more to tornado safety
than that, but in the 1960s and 1970s, an axe in the ground was just as accurate
as the next day’s forecast.
I spent many hours as a child in my grandmother’s dank cellar, listening to
the winds whistle through the cinder-block vents and the hail hammer the tin
door, imagining what was happening outside. My grandmother’s fear of
tornadoes was hardly unique and not at all unwarranted. The small eastern
Oklahoma town of Tahlequah, where I grew up, was the capital of the Cherokee
Nation. The site was chosen in a valley because it was believed to be protected
from tornadoes. That’s one of many myths about the twister; in fact, there are no
safe locations.
The tornado remains a great puzzle, its many myths steeped in folklore. This
book is the life story of one tornado on one day and its consequences—not just
any tornado, but the most powerful twister ever to strike a metropolitan area. It is
the life story of a tornado researcher and his legacy—not just any researcher, but
the most brilliant meteorological detective of the twentieth century. And it is the
story of the lives touched with such a harsh hand on May 3, 1999.
Meteorology is one of the most complex of the sciences. Indeed, it took a
meteorologist to develop one of the new fundamentals of science: chaos theory.
The breakthrough happened in 1961 while American Edward Lorenz was
working with a numerical computer model for weather predictions. While
attempting to repeat one weather pattern, in order to save time, Lorenz entered
only three decimal places, .506, instead of the six, .506127, the computer could
store. He entered his sequence of numbers expecting to see the same weather
pattern take shape on the screen in front of him. What appeared was a radically
different prediction. He’d assumed that the difference of one part in ten thousand
would be minimal, that the picture that emerged would be at least similar to what
he’d seen before. Instead, the two patterns bore no resemblance to each other.
In 1979, Lorenz wrote a landmark research paper exploring this
phenomenon, “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set
Off a Tornado in Texas?” Eventually, chaos theory also became known as the
Butterfly Effect, referring to a small act that creates great consequences. Like a
small break in the clouds over Oklahoma on May 3, 1999. Like a missed target
in Japan on August 9, 1945. Like a mother’s brief moment of indecision. Like
my grandmother burying an axe blade in the ground.
Chaos theory has been much on display since Hurricane Katrina ravaged
New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in September 2005. All actions—or lack of
actions—have consequences. The hurricane and the tornado are different
meteorological animals, but they send us the same message: we are at their
mercy, and we ignore them at our own peril.
—N M
ANCY ATHIS