Journalism

Tornado on Live TV: Meteorologist’s Forecast Interrupted

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Last Updated on February 13, 2022

It might be a meteorologist’s ‘worst nightmare’ — if I may borrow a cliché being used entirely too much lately: a tornado on live TV that forces the meteorologist off the air when it targets the tv station!

Before a massive EF5 tornado ripped through Oklahoma on Monday, Wichita, Kansas saw a less-powerful one threaten its community. And that storm briefly took aim at NBC affiliate KSNW-TV. While Meteorologist J.D. Rudd was on the air talking about the tornado, Chief Meteorologist Dave Freeman interrupted him to order everyone in the studio to take cover.

“Get to shelter right now! Everybody … let’s go!” Freeman commanded. He told viewers they would stay on the air for as long as they could and that they’d leave the live radar image on screen. (It probably would have been more exciting for anyone watching to point a camera at the station employees rushing to the basement.

Fortunately for the station, it appeared that the tornado had begun to pull upward away from land before it arrived at the station, causing minimal damage. Still, I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been for a meteorologist to have to leave his post and stop talking about dangerous weather because that storm happened to be threatening his position. I can only imagine it’d be like a firefighter facing a giant structure fire and finding out just as the adrenaline kicked in that there was a hole in the hose.

You’ve probably seen the viral video by now, but in case you haven’t, I am proud to serve:

You can hear the winds pounding on the station’s roof during the forecast. It wasn’t your typical day at the office, to be sure.

Speaking of tornadoes, the deadly EF-5 that touched down in Moore, Oklahoma caused one scheduling wrinkle for the networks: CBS was forced to pull the third season finale of its Monday night sitcom, Mike & Molly because that episode just happened to have a tornado theme in its plotline. The episode, titled, “The Windy City,” featured the two lead characters revealing secrets to each other as a tornado approached Chicago.

That means the show’s season finale will now fall outside of the all-important May sweeps, which ended on Wednesday, but it was unquestionably the right decision because it would have looked very insensitive to air a sitcom episode about a tornado the same day parts of a community were literally wiped off the map.

the authorPatrick
Patrick is a Christian with more than 30 years experience in professional writing, producing and marketing. His professional background also includes social media, reporting for broadcast television and the web, directing, videography and photography. He enjoys getting to know people over coffee and spending time with his dog.

2 Comments

  • Are news reporters really “frustrated” when endangered? I know I’m more at the TERRIFIED end of the emotional scale. 🙂
    Also, speaking as the sister of a firefighter, your metaphor is flawed. Meteorologists aren’t trying to control or repel the tornado, so I would suggest that a better metaphor would the wind switching direction and setting fire to the hose/truck/gear: something uncontrollable happens. And the adrenaline kicks in as soon as the alarms go out, not when the hoses are pulled.
    I will say, however, that the local coverage–which we watched either on the network feed or on CNN–of the tornado was astoundingly good. SO MUCH BETTER than &#@$^iing Wolf Blitzer….

    • psalm23 It’s not so much being frustrated because they’re endangered…but by then, it’s frustration because they have to stop tracking the storm. If you’re that into weather, you hate to leave the radar when there’s something spinning.
      A fair point on the firefighter metaphor…but meteorologists are trying to get people in the storm’s path to respond to them, rather than the storm itself. It’s the best they’re able to do, obviously, so that’s the level of “control” I think I had in mind.
      I definitely agree that the coverage of this was better than some breaking news situations. Even so, there were unconfirmed reports (reported as BEING unconfirmed) that made their way to the air. There’s little else a reporter can do during breaking news, because even “official” information, like the death toll, is always subject to change. Fortunately, in this case, the “official” numbers wound up being inaccurate and had to be LOWERED. That’s the kind of story we’d all like to be able to tell every time!

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