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Tornado Alley
It had been a quiet spring in Oklahoma. Then, in the early hours of May 3, 1999, fast, high winds of a jet stream raced across the California and Nevada borders and on through Arizona and New Mexico. Meteorologists in Norman, Oklahoma, were anticipating severe storms and maybe even tornadoes.Kara Wiese, a 26-year-old single mother of a little boy, inched out of bed before dawn that Monday, a workday for her at First Capital in Oklahoma City. Her job was to call businesses that were behind on their loan payments. She had expected a partly cloudy day, highs in the 70s -- just right for her son Jordan's T-ball game. But after she heard the latest weather reports, she wondered if Jordan's game would be a washout, which would mean a restless six-year-old without much to do.
Kara was the team's bench mom. Her son, all skinny arms and legs, was the one man in her life, other than her brother, Dustin. Her first love had left her with Jordan. Her second had left her with extensive debt. What Kara had in the world was her mobile home, five acres of land, her car and her collection of unicorns.
She and Jordan lived at Bridge Creek, a development 20 miles southwest of downtown Oklahoma City. Big elephant's-ear plants hid her trailer's metal undercarriage, while crape myrtles and pear trees flourished nearby. Several flower beds adorned the yard. Kara had worked hard to make the modest place beautiful and welcoming.
TV meteorologist Gary England of Oklahoma City's KWTV News 9 had been monitoring the progress of the storm. Oklahoma City and its southern suburbs were perhaps the most tornado-prone area in the world. The reason: The sprawling city sat smack in the middle of so-called Tornado Alley, the stretch of plains extending from Texas to the Dakotas. Most tornadoes occurred in the spring, and no other spot had just the right combination of weather forces and geography, or just the right proximity between the cool winds of the Rockies, the warm air from the Gulf of Mexico and the dry jet streams from the southwestern deserts.
Gary England had issued hundreds of tornado warnings to viewers in his broadcast career. The weather was his passion; he'd been watching over it since 1972. He traveled the state with "Those Terrible Twisters" presentations, filling high school gyms to explain how horrible twisters could be and what people should do to protect themselves. For years, he'd been telling people that one day a really terrible tornado would visit itself upon the metro area. The area couldn't dodge a bullet forever.
At 6:30 a.m., with winds barreling across the deserts at high speeds, forecasters issued a slight risk for severe thunderstorms and possible tornadoes for Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. They knew the winds could produce supercells, thus increasing the tornado potential.
Kara got to work early, at 7:30 a.m., after feeding Jordan and dropping him off at his day-care center near the Bridge Creek School District. The center would drive him to his half-day kindergarten class at Bridge Creek.
At 11:15 a.m., as computers kept crunching millions of pieces of weather data, the National Weather Service in Norman elevated its outlook to a moderate risk for severe storms, with the potential for tornadoes. Meteorologists recalculated the data to include cloud cover developing over Texas and Oklahoma and strong upper-level-wind profiles.
Around 2 p.m., Gary England stepped outside the KWTV forecast center for the first time. He stood behind the building and tilted his head toward the sky, inhaling the air. Some 20 storm trackers, a helicopter, the newsroom crew and an anxious news director were awaiting a decision.
The weather team had reviewed one numerical model after another. "We analyzed data until we were cross-eyed," Gary said. Was this just another typical stormy day in Oklahoma, or were the weather indicators pointing to something truly ominous?
Just two words from Gary -- "priority one," the highest priority -- meant that all the station's reporters and camera crews would be at his disposal. It meant tearing up the evening newscast. It meant getting the station's helicopter, Ranger 9, airborne and alerting all the storm trackers.
The sky was chaotic. "There was the thick, rich smell of moisture," Gary recalled. "The heat, the humidity -- the air just felt unusual."
It reminded Gary of another day, June 8, 1974, the day of an unexpectedly large outbreak of tornadoes. On that day, 14 people in KWTV's viewing area were killed. That experience taught Gary a vital lesson: Always expect the unexpected. He began consulting more closely with the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, which was working to modify the Doppler radar for weather.
Finally, standing there, staring up at churning stratus clouds, Gary moved past the data and focused on his instinct and his experience. He walked back into the station, knowing how much weight his decision would carry. He found the weather producer and uttered two words: "Priority one."
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