Weather or Not

Severe Outflow by R. Edwards

This Date in 1992: Bizarre, Loud, Wet, Worthwhile

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How many folks can claim to have attended performances by all of these in their lives: Jimmy Buffett, Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine, Asia, Bee Gees, Whoopi Goldberg, Jon Secada, Paul Simon, Weird Al Yankovic, Julio Iglesias, Andy Garcia, Rosie O’Donnell, Michael Winslow (the “Man of a Thousand Voices” from Police Academy), Sinbad, Crosby/Stills/Nash, Celia Cruz, and Bobcat Goldthwait?

29 years ago tonight…

How about all those motley characters and more in one marathon show: the Hurricane Andrew benefit at Joe Robbie Stadium. That was a 10-hour run of performances from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m. A cameo appearance onstage by TV meteorologist Bryan Norcross, who was a hero to many for his Andrew coverage, got a loud, emphatic standing ovation. The show also featured assorted sound-system cut-outs, an over-bass’d Secada briefly sounding like a hybrid of the Terminator and Incredible Hulk while in the middle of “Just Another Day without You”, and some distortion feedback about half the time Barry Gibb hit the high falsetto on “Staying Alive” to cap off their half-hour set.

Long equipment changes between acts and short sets got folks impatient and irritated early, until some of the headliners started playing and sound glitches declined. Then in the middle of Gloria’s long MSM set, a heavy warm-cloud rain shower drenched everybody who wasn’t beneath the upper deck, including folks like me on the field. Then it all resumed. [I had a seat about 15 rows before the stage, courtesy of gifts from the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce to journalists, including the woman to whom I was married at the time.] That was just part of the weirdest but perhaps most worthwhile show I’ve attended.

I was only there for Jimmy Buffett, and because it was free for us, save the effort to drive there, but the uniqueness of the experience made it highly worthwhile. Buffett was perfection on Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season (and of course Margaritaville), Gloria was as easy on eyes and ears as she’d ever be again, and Secada clearly proved a very talented performer onstage despite the glitch, and I’m surprised he didn’t have more big hits in his career. Weird Al should have been given a lot more time. The rest were tolerable, or good excuses to hit the latrine. Best: the show netted about $1.3 million for hurricane-recovery efforts. Nobody who was there will forget the experience, for better and worse!

Fort Worth Mega-Wreck

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As of this writing, about 16 hours after it started in the pre-dawn darkness, the massive icing-related vehicle pileup on I-35 in near northern Fort Worth has claimed 6 lives, with at least 65 people being treated for injuries. Here’s a rolling story from local TV station WFAA channel 8.

We’ve seen horror scenes like this in recent years from Interstates in places like Iowa, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It illustrates the fundamental truth that the physics of friction know no geographic limits. I saw it in person in the ice storm of New Years Day 1979, when abandoned vehicles, that had slid off Central Expressway in Dallas, sported not just Texas plates, but Indiana, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, among others. Nobody, from anywhere, is immune to sliding on icy roads. Neither maturity, nor experience, nor even understanding of the laws of physics, makes one immune to them. And a lot of drivers have none of the above.

I’ve driven this stretch of Interstate many times. It’s ideally prone to a mass crash of this sort: an elevated roadway (preferentially ices), headed southbound into an area of tight curves and narrow lanes near downtown, with the approach not visible over a blind hill, where a crash can’t be seen at highway speeds until too late. The thin ice glaze had begun not long before, overnight when traffic was lower. Local officials claimed the road had been salted, but obviously insufficiently.

It was the perfect storm of bad circumstances for such a disaster, except for one aspect: the weather forecast from NWS Ft. Worth (incidentally, located just a couple miles from this mess) was very good, so that wasn’t the problem. Likely some weren’t paying attention to the local forecast or otherwise were ignorant of it (here’s looking at both locals and long-haul truckers).

It’s not as simple as “stay home” either. Many people still are “critical/essential” workers who have to report to in-person duties regardless of weather (including storm forecasters like me!); indeed, the story notes quite a few people in the pileup were health workers. Such situations present a major hazard to first responders (cops, fire crews, ambulances) who have to get in there, close off the scene, sort through the carnage, and treat and remove people. It’s also hazardous to second responders (wrecker personnel, HAZMAT remediators, sanitation crews who have to clean up the roadway of debris, and such). As the story notes, these are events for which emergency management prepares, but hopes not to need to execute their plans. They had to here.

Vehicle-to-vehicle communications tech could help in these scenarios, but is a long way off from standardized mass deployment, and realistically, mostly won’t be retrofitted on older vehicles. Trucking firms should prioritize for this, since their momentum and deadliness are greatest in general, and clearly were here (if you’ve seen the crash video taken from a car on the opposite side of the freeway).

Pray for the injured and the families of the casualties.

Tribute to Bob Johns

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I posted this tribute to my personal Facebook page soon after I learned my old colleague, friend and meteorological mentor Robert H. (Bob) Johns had passed away just shy of his 78th birthday, following a long struggle with a neurodegenerative disorder causing progressive aphasia and memory problems. The text is reproduced here for the open record…with a few edits and photos added.
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Presenting Bob with a “Weather and Sports” trophy for his retirement (SPC Photo)

R.I.P. Bob Johns: friend and mentor to many (including me), former SPC SOO & lead forecaster, formally published scientist, consummate pro on shift, and good sport always — even though he didn’t follow sports.

Bob left a massive legacy in my field. He is best known scientifically as the lead author of the seminal, foundational study on derechoes, but he published other well-known formal and conference papers too. His last scientific article in 2013 was a definitive, major study where he led several collaborators on retrospectively documenting the path of America’s deadliest tornado: the Tri-State event of 18 March 1925.

Bob’s career in severe-storms forecasting spanned parts of 5 decades after he graduated from OU and was part of what’s now the NOAA Corps (formerly U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey). In the early/mid 1990s, during a period of massive turnover at the National Severe Storms Forecast Center/Severe Local Storms (SELS) unit, Bob took me and several other newly arrived, scientifically eager “young pups” (as he called us) under his wing and taught us a great deal about severe-storms forecasting and analysis — both in his “SELS workshops” and as a SELS lead. He was super-serious and thorough on shift — all meteorology, all the time — and a practically peerless analyst with driven attention to detail in the charts he drew.

Bob Johns early in his tenure as a lead forecaster, analyzing charts at SELS-Kansas City, 1982 — the same year he issued the first “Particularly Dangerous Situation” tornado watch for the 2 April 1982 violent tornadoes in southeastern OK and northeast TX.

Bob grew up watching storms in Terhune, Indiana (see this fascinating biography of Bob, by John Lewis), and remained a deeply devoted lifelong weather buff, even through his viewing of the violent 10 May 2010 east Norman/Little Axe tornado from his front yard. But he had a lighter side too. My adult kids have fond memories of digging up rose rocks at his house in rural east Norman when they were little, including a large “Pride Rock” (Lion King reference) shaped barite specimen I still have in front of the house today.

Four NSSFC staff members in Oct. 1973: Roy Darrah (L), Bob Johns (then a “young pup” himself), his mentor Larry Wilson, and longtime forecaster Frank Woods.
Famous photo of Steve Corfidi (L), Jack Hales (middle) and Bob Johns (right) at shift-change briefing, SELS_Kansas City, 1984.

Bob and I had some great conversations on the quietest of weather shifts. He didn’t care much for storm chasing when I got to SELS, but after I took him a couple of times, he also admitted he learned a lot, mostly about storm behavior and how the laboratory of the sky can enlighten and inform the forecaster at work. He also gained an appreciation for the beautiful and artistic side of storm observing, and that it wasn’t just a thrillseeking sport; indeed, he was with me for this inspirational end-of-chase moment in northeastern Kansas.

Even though he didn’t like sports, Bob was a good sport, and took friendly ribbing about his disdain for sports well. I even got him to wear a Cowboys jacket a few times at work when he was cold, and to wear a homemade Cowboys poster around himself for a charitable fundraiser. He once told me that *if* he liked football, he would be a Cowboys fan…”But make no mistake, I don’t like football!”. 🙂

Bob would only do this for a worthy charitable cause, but that he did. Whatever amount I donated, to whatever the cause was, was well worth it. He indeed was a good sport!

In addition to the football+weather trophy I therefore gave him at his retirement, for which you can see the humored joy on his face in the topmost photo, fellow Hoosier and hoops coach Bobby Knight (yes, that one) sent him a heartfelt, page-long, congratulatory retirement letter.

Former SPC director Joe Schaefer (L) presents a surprised Bob Johns with a framed congratulatory letter and autographed photo from then-Texas Tech (former Indiana University) basketball coach Bob Knight, as Peggy Stogsdill (R) looks on. SPC Photo.

Bob’s influence on severe-storms science, and numerous students and colleagues therein, will ripple positively through generations. My condolences to his family and all his other many friends throughout our profession.