If you’ve been following this blog lately, then you’re well aware that yesterday was the 45th anniversary of the 1965 Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak. The commemoration held at the Tornado Memorial Park in Dunlap, Indiana, came together beautifully thanks to the hard work of my friend Debbie Watters, who owns the park. To say that it was a memorable event understates some of the truly amazing things that transpired.

Dan McCarthy, the meteorologist in charge at KIND in Indianapolis, was the keynote speaker. Dan did a superb job describing the strides that severe weather forecasting and the warning system have taken since 1965, and explaining how the Palm Sunday Outbreak served as a catalyst for those changes. If there is any comfort to hearts that still ache over the loss of loved one in the storms, Dan suggested that at least part of it may lie in knowing that a tornado catastrophe of such magnitude is unlikely to ever happen again.

Several other speakers followed Dan. Last of all was Debbie. I think one reason she does so well behind a microphone is that she pours her heart out toward her listeners. At a gathering of tornado survivors and their families, the needs may not be readily apparent; but Debbie, having lost her brother Stevie in the Dunlap F5, knows what lies below the surface. It had to have taken some courage to address the subject of survivor guilt as honestly and straightforwardly as Debbie did, but it’s only in shining light on such a painful issue that its grip can perhaps be broken on people who, over four decades later, still wonder why they lived while their loved one died

At the end of the service, there was a balloon launch in loving memory of the Elkhart County tornado victims. It was a poignant moment, watching those bright, merry balloons soar skyward into the blue.

But it was the behind-the-scenes happenings, the interpersonal connections, that will live on in my mind. There were some heartwarming moments, and a few that were just plain incredible. Debbie had always wondered who the stranger was who saved her mother’s life after the tornado, and who sheltered the two of them in his car until an ambulance arrived. Yesterday, a woman introduced herself to Debbie as the man’s wife. You can imagine what a powerful meeting that was for both women.

Among the roughly 150 attendees, I was delighted to see Paul and Elizabeth Huffman. Paul is the retired Elkhart Truth photographer who took the famous image of the twin funnels straddling US 33 south of Dunlap, destroying the Midway Trailer Court. That photo, one of six in a sequence, is arguably the most famous and dramatic tornado photograph of all time, and one that has inspired more than one young kid to pursue meteorology as a career.

Now in his 80s, Paul is a peppery and humorous personality, and his wife, Elizabeth, is a sweetheart. It was fascinating, in talking with them, to get insights into how things played out that day. Paul wasn’t even aware of the twin-funnel structure when he snapped the photo; in his viewfinder he saw just the rightmost funnel. It was only when the startling image of “The Twins” emerged in development that Paul realized he had captured something extraordinary on film.

I was particularly pleased when one of the speakers, Brian Beaver–an award-winning radio correspondent formerly with IPR–took time to publicly recognize Paul and honor him for his achievement.

My friend Pat Bowman and her brother John were also present. But of course they would be–Pat is integrally knit into these events. She and Deb are my two “tornado ladies,” dear to each other and to me. The way that the three of us connected is a pretty incredible story in its own right, and it all started with Pat. Actually, it started long before, with a newspaper account of a young couple’s tragic loss of their child, and of a small boy’s prayers for them in response. There is a reason that Pat is very special to me. But that story is for another time.

The last photo on this page is one I will always treasure. That’s Elizabeth and Paul Huffman on the left. Debbie is the blonde, and that’s Pat on the right. God gifts us with people, and it was a blessing to me to see these four together. The threads of events that connect them are intricate and remarkable, and I feel privileged to see the connections continue to unfold in their lives and in mine.

Today marks the 45th anniversary of the Palm Sunday Tornadoes, the second worst tornado outbreak in Midwest history. Between the time that the first funnel dropped in eastern Iowa shortly before 2:00 EST and the time when the last one dematerialized in the night sky over Ohio eleven hours later, tornadoes took 272 lives in six Great Lakes states.

This April 11 also happens to be a Sunday, but while it is a moody day, it holds no threat of violent weather. I’m sure we’ll see our share of that this spring, but not today. At the moment, I’m sipping on my morning cup of coffee; then I’ll shower up and head down to the historical museum in Bristol, and then to the tornado memorial park in Dunlap, Indiana, where my friend, Debbie Watters, has organized her commemorative event. If you’re interested in attending, click here for details and a map.

It is strange how something that happened over four decades ago, and in which I was not directly involved, has remained with me all these years. But the ripples of that long-ago Palm Sunday evening have extended into many lives. Today’s event will draw not only survivors, many of whom are now well advanced in years, but also their children, their nieces and nephews, their grandchildren. The wind’s roar still echoes through a broad patchwork of lives, young and old.

The Palm Sunday Tornadoes were formative not just in family histories and individual lives; they were also a seminal event in severe weather meteorology and operational forecasting. Out of that disaster came a remarkable paper by Dr. Theodore Fujita, published in the “Monthly Weather Review,” which presented the first truly in-depth analysis of a tornado outbreak. For the first time, you can see a system for tracking tornado families and their members. You’ll find Fujita’s evidence for multiple vortices, a now well-established phenomenon which was unknown at the time.

It was out of the Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak that Skywarn evolved in the interest of enhancing public safety during severe weather events. The Weather Bureau’s communication infrastructure, which suffered some fatal breakdowns during the outbreak, was scrutinized for improvement. Civil defense sirens, hitherto unused to alert Great Lakes residents of approaching tornadoes, were harnessed as part of the public alert system. And the very language of severe weather warnings was changed. “Tornado forecasts” became “tornado watches” to help the public better distinguish between a watch, issued when conditions are favorable for tornadoes to develop, and a warning, when a tornado has actually been detected, whether by radar or actual visual confirmation.

I’ll have more to report when I return from today’s doings. Right now, I need to finish my coffee and hit the shower and then the road.

Tonight’s rehearsal with Amy Young and Friends went great. I’m really looking forward to the concert next Friday evening.

Amy is a talented singer/songwriter in the West Michigan area, and she has surrounded herself with a cast of fine musicians for this event. She covers a variety of styles ranging from blues to rock to folk to jazz. If you live in the Grand Rapids vicinity, please come on out and give her and the rest of the band, including me, a listen. Here are the details:

Date: Friday, January 22

Time: 7 p.m.

Place: Schuler Books,  2660 28th St. SE, Kentwood

Admission: FREE, FREE, FREEEEEE!!!

Mark it on your calendar and make it a date. Hope to see you there!

This post is a continuation off of the previous one. Last night was the final night of the stage musical “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” in Hastings. The show enjoyed a decent and enthusiastic turnout. Today, as I reflect on it, I want to say what a truly impressive job the young actors turned out. These small-town high school kids rendered an absolutely stellar performance, and it was a privilege for me to have played a small part in making it happen.

What I saw onstage clearly reflected a lot of talent, dedication, focus, hard work, enthusiasm, and friendship and mutual supportiveness among the cast. The result was not merely a superb production, but also a joyous one, and, frankly, a touching one as I consider the network of human relationships that lay behind it.

To any of the teen performers who happen to read this post: Bravo! Splendidly done! Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Snoopy, Sally, Schroeder–each of you did a fantastic job. I’m well aware that there were plenty of others who helped make it happen–supporting cast, stage help, directors, and so on. My congratulations and appreciation goes to you all.

God bless each of you. Enjoy the afterglow of a magnificent show–and have a wonderful Christmas.

Paul Sirvatka of COD, conference organizer

The 2009 College of DuPage Severe Weather Symposium is now behind me, and in the light of it, it seems a bit weird to think that the day after, I headed over to my buddy Bill’s to watch the next episode of the Storm Chasers series on Discovery Channel. It feels like two different worlds, like boarding a bus in Grand Rapids and getting off on Mars. But the difference is superficial, a matter of editorial slant; the raw material remains the same, and however it gets spun on television, it’s nevertheless the stuff of research. In reality, people really, truly are going out there and surrounding supercells with an armada of mobile radars and other devices, including manned probe vehicles, all in the interest of collecting data that can increase our understanding of, in a nutshell, what makes tornadoes happen.

The conference featured some of the most knowledgeable and revered names in severe weather research, operational forecasting, and storm chasing: Eric Rasmussen. Chuck Doswell. Roger Edwards. Roger Wakimoto. Josh Wurman. The list goes on, but the point is, a lot of very knowledgeable heads were present in the Double Tree Hotel’s conference room this past week, and some of the insights they shared were fascinating.

Taylor and Carlsen of Environment Canada

Some of the coolest stuff didn’t even come out of the United States. Neil Taylor and Dave Carlsen of Environment Canada shared a photogrammetric analysis of the Elie, Manitoba, F5 tornado, and preliminary findings from the 2008 UNSTABLE team’s exploration of a well-known but hitherto unresearched dryline phenomenon in Alberta. The latter featured EC’s own mobile mesonet, complete with a Doppler-equipped airlplane.

Here are just a few, representative snapshots of the many other topical materials covered:

* Adam Houston talked about the effects of entrainment on unstable parcels, and suggested that the important issue for storm formation isn’t whether a parcel is merely unstable, but whether it is “supercritical”–i.e., possesses enough CAPE to overcome the effect of entrainment.

Eric Rasmussen

* Eric Rasmussen shared some of the prelimary findings of VORTEX2, describing the interaction of the RFD with horizontal vortex rings in tornadogenesis.

* Roger Edwards discussed the forecast funnel and the pros and cons of numerical models in operational forecasting.

* Al Pietrycha offered an operational forecasting perspective on non-mesocyclone tornadoes, and more specifically, on landspouts.

* For his dinner presentation Saturday night, Chuck Doswell gave an overview of the history of severe weather forecasting and research, and shared his outlook on things to come.

The shape of the future was in fact a topic of concern for a number of the speakers, notably Doswell and Edwards. Amid the influx of information from the research community on misocyclones, vorticity arches, moisture

Roger Edwards

convergence, and so on, those on the operational side focused on a more pragmatic matter: the widespread over-reliance on numerical models versus hand analysis.

Will forecast models replace human forecasters? According to Doswell and Edwards, yes, at least for most forecasting scenarios. Edwards emphasized that when it comes to severe weather events–the most difficult to forecast, and the costliest in terms of lives and property–humans will still play an important role. But both men deplored the degree to which forecasters have abdicated hand analysis to the models, which continue to make advances in accuracy at the expense of human development. In a word, the attention and the money are being invested in building better technology, not better forecasters.

Doswell’s message to meteorology students was blunt: either soak in as much information as possible, and commit to becoming experts at hand analysis and motivated self-educators, or else find a different career. Chuck, who is not known for being shy about sharing his viewpoints, wasn’t being nasty, just extremely forthright.

Chuck Doswell speaks

The mets from Environment Canada, Carlsen and Taylor, were clearly shocked to learn how dependent United States WFOs have become on forecast models. The Canadian meteorologists take hand analysis as a given part of their jobs, and couldn’t imagine not rolling up their sleeves and interacting with the surface and upper-level charts firsthand.

If there was a primary take-away value for me from this conference, I guess that’s it: the importance of getting my arms around hand analysis. Practically speaking, while I found the other material fascinating and enriching, much of it was not particularly applicable to my needs as a storm chaser. The first priority is to get to the right storms. Everything else falls into place from there.

The event I’ve been so looking forward to is here at last: College of Du Page’s 2009 Severe Weather Symposium.

Tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. kicks off with Adam Houston speaking on “Principles of Deep Convection.” I’m not sure how much of his material will be an overview of mesoscale basics and how much will introduce new knowledge, but from my perspective, revisiting the essentials can never hurt, particularly since the rest of the first day will all focus on thunderstorm initiation.

Based on my two previous experiences with COD’s severe weather conferences and on the contents of the present agenda, I have high expectations for this conference. It should be an informational gold mine, and I anticipate leaving it Saturday enriched with some extremely useful insights–many of them cutting-edge– that should enhance my forecasting skills during the 2010 storm chasing season.

The goal is, of course, improved targeting, with fewer busts and more tornado intercepts. But deepening one’s knowledge is a reward in itself, and the payoffs can’t always be predicted with pinpoint accuracy any more than the weather can. For now, it’s enough to say that I’m very excited about this conference. The lineup of speakers is impressive, the subject material sounds like everything I could ever hope for, and I look forward to finally connecting with a few people whom I’m familiar with from Stormtrack, but whom I’ve never met in person.

My storm chasing partner, Bill Oosterbaan, will also be attending, naturally–he’s as gonzo about this stuff as I am. We’ll be rooming together. Wish his bro, Tom, could make it as well, and my good friend, Kurt Hulst, but both of them have commitments and financial constraints. Tough break. We’ll miss you guys! And we’ll take good notes–promise.

I might add that I’ll be bringing my saxophone. Since the event is being held at the Double Tree Hotel in the Chicago area, the chance of finding some live jazz in the area isn’t out of the question, maybe even in the hotel restaurant. Should the opportunity arise, it would be fun to sit in with a band, and in any case, I can at least get in a little practice. Wherever I go, I take my saxophone with me. Everywhere, including storm chases. It pays to be prepared.

It’s drawing closer, and I’m getting excited. I’m talking about the College of DuPage’s upcoming Severe Weather Symposium, which will be held November 5-7. With a lineup of presenters that features some of the foremost luminaries in severe thunderstorm research, the event promises to be stellar.

I’m surprised I haven’t seen more talk about it on Stormtrack, but maybe that’s because the symposium is being held in Chicago rather than out in the Great Plains. Or perhaps it’s because the midweek timing puts a crimp on people who have to work.

But while proximity may be an issue for some and scheduling for others, the content is compelling enough that if you’re anywhere within a couple hundred miles, it will truly be your loss if you don’t make time for this event. Looking over the agenda, here’s what I see:

* All of Thursday afternoon is devoted to various aspects of convective initiation. If you want to improve your targeting skills with the latest information, this day alone ought to be worth its weight in gold.

* Day two focuses largely on tornadogenesis, but includes other topics such as a photogrammetric analysis of the Elie, Manitoba, F5 tornado, and issues in severe weather warnings. The latter presentation will no doubt address the hotly contended use of the enhanced “tornado emergency” wording.

* Day three will…well, look, here’s the complete agenda. You can read it for yourself, and conclude, as I did, that this is going to be a standout event for storm chasers.

I’ve been waiting for a long time for another severe weather conference courtesy of Paul Sirvatka and the College of DuPage. I attended two of their symposiums some years ago, back when my storm chasing skills were still very formative, and each one was time well spent. This one looks to be the best yet. Poised between the end of a stormless autumn and the long, desperate, SDS-riddled winter months, it will provide a welcome immersion into the world of tornado research and operational forecasting that ought to bear dividends when the Gulf reopens for business again next spring.

If you’re a business owner or executive, this post is for you. It’s admittedly a tangent from my normal focus on jazz saxophone and storm chasing, but I’ve a hunch that a few of you may benefit from the digression.

This is to notify you of The Quintessential Encounter–a four-day retreat at an award-winning lodge in the heart of the Ozark Mountains that can help you set, and equip you to attain, your professional and life goals.

Sounds pretty addy for a blog, eh? Well, as I’ve said, this is a departure from my usual style, and in fact it’s the first time I’ve ever pushed a non-weather, non-music related event on Stormhorn.com. But the person who is organizing The Quintessential Encounter, executive life coach and mediation/negotiation specialist Lorraine King-Markum, is a close personal friend of mine. I know her vision, I know her capabilities, and I know the quality of experience she intends to deliver. The woman is incredible, and I can say with confidence that if you’re among the twelve lucky people who will participate in this retreat, which is scheduled for May 25-28, 2010, you will find that it truly lives up to the description, “life-defining.”

It will also very likely be the most enjoyable developmental experience in your career. I’ve visited the Big Cedar Lodge, and it is sublime. Lorraine is going to great pains to provide a beautiful and relaxing environment for a very different kind of business retreat–one that serves you rather than the promoters; one that will invigorate and inspire you rather than leave you feeling brain-dead after eight hours of mind-numbing presentations.

In Lorraine’s words, “The age of ‘market them to death’ while they are exhausted and impressionable is over!”

Whether you’re a beginner or seasoned business veteran, this transformational event is going to give you easy-to-follow blueprints for unlocking the lifestyle and business success you’ve been striving for. You will be mentored through the revolutionary new CRAFT coaching system, which provides real life applications.

Your registration fee includes:

* three nights at the award-winning Big Cedar Lodge from Tuesday evening, May 25^th to Friday, May 28^th

* a welcome party

* two meals a day plus snacks

* all experiential exercises

* workbook

* coaching sessions

* making a product to sell online

* all facilities at Big Cedar

There you have it. For more information or to make a reservation, visit the website or email Lorraine at lorraine@kingleadership.com.

It’s always a pleasure to sit in with local musicians. In Suttons Bay, Michigan, I got a chance to blow with some very, er, unusual cats. Talk about jazz being an art form.

I had played a fun gig in Leelanau the previous evening just north of Cedar with the Rhythm Section Jazz Band. Lisa came with me, with the idea that we’d overnight in Traverse City and then take in a bit of northern Michigan. There’s no more beautiful place than the Leelanau peninsula in the fall, and we took our time driving through the area, up the east coast along Grand Traverse Bay to Leelanau State Park and the Grand Traverse Lighthouse, then down the shoreline of Lake Michigan to Sleeping Bear.

Stopping in the artsy-craftsy town of Suttons Bay, we had gotten some coffee and were heading back to the car when I happened to spot a jam session taking place outside a shop. Strangely, though, not a note was being played. As you can see, the band was in fact a group of stylized jazz musicians made out of metal and set out on the lawn. Whatever the tune was that they were playing, they seemed to be really getting into  it, but something was missing. Ya can’t have a jazz band without a sax player, ya know!

Naturally, I volunteered my services, and we went at it. Lisa caught our little ensemble with her camera. Hope you enjoy the pics!

The College of DuPage will host its fourth severe weather conference in Downer’s Grove, IL, on Thursday, November 5, through Saturday, November 7. At $220 a pop for non-students, it’s a pricey proposition. But considering its proximity, Great Lakes chasers may want to invest their shekels. I’ve attended two conferences hosted by Paul Sirvatka et al some years back, and they were very worthwhile. With its cast of preeminent presenters, and topics that include the preliminary findings of Vortex 2, this year promises to be particularly rewarding.

According to the FAQ on the symposium website, “This conference is intended to present the latest in severe weather meteorology to a diverse group of severe weather professionals and students. National conferences present some of this material but time contraints do not allow for a detailed look into the state of the science.”

In the words of COD:

The conference is intended for professional operational and research meteorologists, upper-level undergraduate and graduate students of atmospheric science, storm chasers, severe weather spotters and severe weather enthusiasts. We assume that attendees will have some understanding of severe weather meteorology in order to receive maximum benefit from the severe weather sessions. The focus of the conference is primarily on understanding the latest techniques for severe weather forecasting, the use of meso-scale and storm-scale modelling, physical processes leading to the development of supercells and tornadoes and the effective use of remote sensing in severe thunderstorm evolution and behavior.

This symposium will also highlight some of the preliminary results of VORTEX II.

Rooms at the DoubleTree Hotel and Suites, where the conference will be held, are available for $95 per night and will accommodate four persons.

So there you have it. If you can afford the hotel prices and the cost of the conference, which includes an evening banquet, then this is one event you’ll want to make. I’m contemplating my cash flow, holding my breath, and getting set to register.