part 10 of the storm chaser saga [fiction ripped from the headlines]:
©Mark H. Pillsbury
Rescue over the Rainbow (rating: PG-13)
Comparing these two free-spirits to some sort of weather phenomena would be too simple; a spring breeze blowing hard, unpredictably, and fresh; or a fierce hurricane gale with wet fury and the damaging ebb and flow of a storm surge. Weather metaphors don’t do justice to the mercurial ways of the two young storm chasers trapped in the east Texas wilderness during the massive wildfires of summer 2011.
Certainly they lived an exciting, romantic life on the road; except summers which were usually reserved for relaxation and retrospective of a successful spring of capturing tornadoes on video, preferably reminiscing with an icy-cold drink in their hand. The “long way” through Texas had proven to be an egregious error, one for which they might pay with their lives.
Jessica caught the breaks growing up, being smart, perky, and curious, the constant-learner of her friends, popular and yet more mature in many ways than her high-school crowd. She was beautiful but never dressed to draw in the boys like a siren; she was smart but never too cool or too busy studying to have fun with the rest of her gang. Her interest in weather came from Jessica's relationship with her father, who taught not be afraid of the big storms that raged through the Midwest, taking her outside even as debris flew through the air during a storm. His calm demeanor and respect for the power of God shown in nature was at the root of her curiosity, and it gave Jessica the confidence to study what could never be controlled or reduced to something stared at through a microscope. Meteorology was majestic, mysterious, meticulous, but at the same time it was grandiose.
On the other hand, Rick was the average all-American daredevil Oklahoma show-off, under-sized and a bit geeky for his contemporaries growing up in the rural state north of Texas. He never cared much for sports in a town ravenous for football glory, just one of the ways in which he felt misunderstood. He would sooner study on Saturday than waste the whole day in the scorching sun without being able to “move.” Even though Rick never really competed in sports, he was as mobile as a point-guard, aggressive as a middle-linebacker, and as swift as a soccer-midfielder attacking the ball. Rick poured his time into studying meteorology because he had a plan: follow big storms until he got close enough to record HD video, which he could sell like Blue Fin Tuna off Cape Cod, premium catch paying premium dollars.
There are thousands of so-called “storm-chasers,” just like thousands who think they can make money playing golf. However, being a “professional” storm-chaser takes the same stamina, will, and accuracy of a man who shapes a 7-iron tee shot from 200 yards, placing a tiny white ball on a postage-stamp green; with the cameras rolling! It takes skill, preparation, planning, intuition, courage, luck, and patience to go to the right point and wait for a hurtling freight-train without tracks to barrel toward your intersection when everyone else in the county is running for cover. Guessing the direction of a mesocyclone is tricky business, staying put so it comes to hit you square in the mouth is an act of bravado or insanity, whichever way you look at it. But Rick was willing to take just about any chance to nail the “money clip,” as they called the short snippet of footage networks and news agencies were willing to buy for large coinage.
They worked so hard together chasing weather for about a year that love had a hard time squeezing in between Rick and his mistress, Miss Tornado Alley. He sought the next storm with a relentless fervor, as if pursuing a lover. Jessica followed along as an able assistant, good at whatever she was asked to do; but never with the intensity of the president and CEO of T&A, Rick Tarleton, the rising entrepreneur of extreme weather. As they grew to rely on each other more, and when the money was short in the first few months, Jessica thought it was alright to stay with Rick in one motel room on the road. Infrequently they would also have a trail car of some OU-meteor buddies, the “subs” as Rick affectionately called them, however he would never let on that they were an item; she had to get her own room on those occasions. Their liaisons were physical and inconsistent, yet they deeply cared for each other in an immature way. They were too busy to define their relationship or really talk about what was coming next; which is why this vacation was pivotal in the evolution of their lives. Jessica was ready to take their connection to the next level, but she was uncomfortable with an existence on the road chasing tornadoes.
She felt some independence with the extra pay she received doing the weekend weather on the local FOX TV affiliate, channel 25. It was nice being a small-town celebrity, but how much creativity went into reporting Oklahoma weather? Really, it was hot for so long, then bitter cold reigned for 3 months bringing some snow, finally the excitement of spring showed Okies the only extreme weather drama they could see in a year. Once again, her reporting returned to the dust-bowl heat of the 6-month drought known as summer. Jessica wanted people to be happy, so she treasured the few times when her enthusiasm for weather was a positive force in the community on a beautiful weekend. She enjoyed telling her neighbors to go out and make it a great weekend when she knew the weather would cooperate, and just the fact of her being on TV made her, unnatural as it was, bigger-than-life. Jessica treated that role with honor and respect, like a rainbow. Maybe in the background, Rick was a little bit jealous.
Their mission was to slowly make it to the new cruise ship terminal at the Port of Houston known as Barbours Cut, then taking a “party boat” out into the Caribbean Sea, where Rick and Jessica loved to scuba dive. It gave them the same thrill as chasing God’s creation above the ocean surface. Stopping in Liberty County was a chance detour, but Rick wanted to see his cousin Clay who had some land, a pond on which to fish, and a small bunkhouse. The wildfires were uninvited guests. Actually, they listened to country music driving down through east Texas, and did not pay attention to the headlines about the massive Texas drought or the local fire plague. This was a lazy time of year when they both decided to “unplug.” As quickly as a tornado strikes an unsuspecting town asleep during an unstable spring evening, wildfires have consumed over 3 million acres of Texas forest almost 16 thousand times in separate incidents of reported fires. Almost every Texas County had a burn ban, rural areas a tinderbox for indiscriminate flames.
Strangely, Rick used none of the tools of his previous success reacting to this emergency. Clay was forceful and confident but ultimately he did not stay together with the team during the most critical time of their escape. Jessica, dutifully compliant and contrite until overcome by smoke and exhaustion, was this tragedy’s character least likely to take risks or ignore the danger in which they found themselves. Wildfires seem isolated and small compared to a tornado’s fury, but their lack of respect for the power of fire put them in a compromised position: it was like someone thinking that staying underneath a beach umbrella will keep them from getting sunburned; at the end of the day, without sunblock, the heat, pain, and burning sensation can ruin a vacation!
This was the same consistently smart, diligent, serious young lady she had always been, even though Jessica had avoided dozens of close scrapes with menacing threats over the years since the tranquil days at OU. Inexplicably, she found herself boarding a yellow fire helicopter with her boyfriend Rick, lacking control, disoriented by the past few hours of running, and weakened to the point of giving up; however, even at the last minute as she boarded, Jessica flashed her 1000-watt smile to the pilot which gave him the little boost of courage he needed to perform under such harrowing circumstances, under which he had never before flown. Finally, everything was going to be alright. They were rising upward, soaring, pulling ascendant against gravity to the heavens, away from the fiery furnace below.
to be continued in chapter XI...
©Mark H. Pillsbury (2011)
[Legal disclaimer: no part of this blog, any idea, line of fictional characters, or publication of written materials (a/k/a "intellectual property" or IP) may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form. It is arguable whether in fact, any permission in advance is even possible within the legal "fair use doctrine." The full extent of the law may be used in defending copyrights and trademarks, if necessary. Therefore, copying, quoting, crediting, or any reference to this IP, is permissible only under certain circumstances but should be done carefully after consulting legal counsel. Thank you, but a lawyer friend suggested this could be a problem if the storm chaser saga really went viral, or "caught fire," pardon that pun. You gotta keep your sense of humor when dealing with the Law?]
Showing posts with label OU. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OU. Show all posts
Friday, July 29, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Part one: Fire and Rain (fiction ripped from the headlines)
Part one: Fire and Rain (fiction ripped from the headlines)
Storm chasers at work: https://youtu.be/8jWOq3lWvz0
©Mark H. Pillsbury (2011)
[Some material may be deemed inappropriate for less mature audiences]
They were storm chasers, but the spring tornado season was so active with over 100 tornadoes in June, they were looking for a change. After dating a year and working together almost two, Rick and Jessica often finished each other’s sentences. They were Sooners, trained in meteorology in one of the finest departments for weather in the country, schooled in the heart of tornado alley, Norman Oklahoma.
“Jess, why are you so quiet? Aren't you happy to take this cruise?”
Jessica was tall, thin and sweet. She liked the rainbows better than the thunderstorms,and on weekends at FOX25 she “did the weather,” indeed, she was proud during the broadcast when underneath her name sat the big word: Meteorologist. She wasn’t big like that girl in Dallas so many years ago who could block out most of East Texas by turning sideways, however when they split a big royalty check from the Discovery channel for video of the big twister in Millbury Ohio, she did sneak away that summer and get some work done on the second floor, so to speak. Rick loved it, and all her small-screen associates assured her good looks were the way to rise through the ranks, as long as you had talent to team with the girls.
Rick, the hard-charger of the group, founded Tarleton & Associates (or TNA like he loved to snicker when he used initials to name his company) right out of OU. He minored in business, but wanted to chase the biggest storms each spring, film them up-close and hi-def, sell the footage to networks and Cable shows that specialize in high tension reality-TV.
“I only see my cousin one weekend every couple of years, babe; can you try to be nice to me? This is an expensive date we are going on next week.” Jessica had no idea where Liberty County was; maybe she would feel better once they cut through the blue water of the Caribbean Sea.
Even though they had only a Chevy Tahoe and a satellite link to their laptops, Rick usually rode the waves of instability first, and that is where he earned his money. He arrived early at the boundary separating hot, dry air to the west from warm, moist air to the east, known as a “dryline,” and like a wildcat driller, he molded an opinion how the next cloud would play; he then drilled down into the data on the laptop (for which he paid a fortune in subscription fees) in order to back up his gambler hunch. Rick seemed to know instinctively which way to run. Jessica lingered on the idea that despite her love of weather, indeed because she understood them both, her man would have to retreat from the dangerous mistress twisters had become.
His training at OU quickly focused on what produces “meso-cyclones;” an area founded by Ted Fujita more than a decade before Rick was born. Fujita, a Japanese-American scientist, invented the recycling hypothesis of “tornadogenesis” including the spotting of RFD (rear-flank downdrafts) which showed-up clearly on radar as “hook echoes.” Rick read radar as an oil man reads 3D seismic imaging from the Gulf of Mexico; watching the bright hues of his laptop change as the data crunched through his Pentium processor. He used the cell phone to chat with other storm-chasers only when he felt behind in the race, but Rick was usually a front-runner.
Rick’s "Christmas shopping season” was between April and June, and usually the hours of operation were between 4 and 9PM, when big storms heated up. Classic stormchasing occurred in Tornado Alley, an area in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and South Dakota where the proper atmospheric conditions existed in abundance during that time of year. At 10 he watched the movie Twisters, and he was 13 when Doppler radar recorded the fastest wind speed ever measured, 318 miles per hour, in a tornado that hit the suburbs of Oklahoma City, OK, on May 3, 1999. He remembered that storm like a kid remembers how many trophies Michael Jordan collected with the Bulls.
“Why do you squeal like a school-girl when we hit the gas heading up one of those dirt roads? [toward a storm]” Jessica was ribbing Rick, because she knew he loved tornadoes more than she.
“I do not?!” Rick said.
They were headed to a cousin’s ranch in Liberty County to do a little four-wheelin, cat-fishin, and hanging out in the country as they travelled toward Houston’s new cruise ship terminal to jump on a boat. This would be a great opportunity to relax with Jessica and talk about their future. Not surprisingly, he had some very specific plans.
“Maybe it is the adrenalin rush, but when I look across the prairie and see one of those huge grey elephant trunks reaching down out of a supercell,” Rick was excited even in this retelling, “I’m not trying to joke, it pulls me closer!”
“Remember when we dove last year off the wall of Cozumel?” Rick asked Jessica, “The deep blue of the abyss was calling in a way, wasn’t it?”
“Like hell,” Jessica snapped.
“You didn’t see it?” Rick responded. “No,” said Jessica, “I mean it reminded me of the depths of hell and I wanted to go up; I didn’t like it at all.” She continued warily, “if we do this storm thing much longer Rick, it is going to be the end of us.” Jessica went silent, knowing somehow what she said had multiple facets.
Rick was lost in thought. He remembered filming at Millbury and feeling like the trap had ensnared him once, only to thrust through the howling winds back to the truck as Jessica peeled out at a 90 degree angle away from the storm path, fleeing down an anonymous country road.
They pulled up to the ranch house in mid-afternoon, and the mercury was flirting with the century mark. Both of them knew innately that the dewpoint and the air temperature were sticking too close for comfort. Rick piled out their bags and went inside to drink in cold air and maybe an adult beverage, his throat was dry from a long day in the saddle.
His cousin Clay was very different than Rick. He was older, taller, more direct, fearless, graduated as a Texas Longhorn, a Christian, and he usually made a quick shot across the bow to put you off-guard, nevertheless, Rick thought of him as a brother, and was delighted to see him.
After big back-slappin hugs, and Clay popping the tops on chilled Coronas, they settled down on the couch and turned on the satellite television. Rick hoped that Clay would ask him about what was playing on Discovery Channel, but instead he got right to the point, “How long ya’ll been dating?”
Rick and Jessica sort of grinned as they looked at each other like doubles partners in tennis, sending silent messages to each other: "You take-it!"
“Coupla years, Clay, why do you ask?” from Rick. Jessica just chuckled and sipped the cold beer.
“Trip like this almost seems like a honeymoon?” he said sardonically.
“Nope. Just getting away after a busy spring chasing dollars.” Rick was not defensive, but he did not want to get into any of this with anyone but Jessica.
“Do you think what you do together is as dangerous as bullfighting?” Clay continued, unabated.
“What do you mean ‘what we do together?’ Clay?” Rick replied cleverly, still parrying with his cousin.
“Getting right up close to a tornado, is that like snake-charming or Russian roulette?”
photo credit: Reed (1909)
"Many entertainers, pilots, sports stars, explorers, journalists, cops, Marines, nurses, drivers, have to go in harm’s way to make a living, but the natural disaster that is most accessible, shocking, loud, and violent, is the tornado. It does more in 5 minutes than any army. People want to look at it up close, just like they go to the zoo. They pay to stay at a distance," said Rick, continuing, "Aren’t we meeting market demand? There are hundreds of storm-chasers in Tornado Alley?!"
“Does the number go down every year?” Clay sipped as he grinned. “Will you guys, put a car seat in the Tahoe when Junior rides along after the twister?” Jess lit up.
That one went a foot slightly outside the boundary line, but Rick was used to this kind of joking. Most of the time he dished it out more than took it.
Most biting humor is equal parts truth and jocularity.
Eventually they changed into cooler clothing and went down to the little pond at sunset, fishing (casting), talking and drinking; nothing much happened until the sun went down.
Fortunately, Clay brought frozen pizzas from CPK, and plenty of cold-longnecks. There was no more talk of relationships, storms, cruises, business, or Houston. It was time for youthful socializing, talking sports, family gossip; and Clay getting to know Jessica.
Considering all their rustic reminiscing, back to nature fun, listening to music, and staying up late into the night, they were remarkably “unplugged” for their generation. They did not know that burn warnings were up in all the counties around Liberty, and the NWS was under high alert for wildfire. They had no idea that bearing down upon their little chunk of the woods, was a ten-mile wide wall of flame.
This menace did not rain, hail, or spin. Considering how few roads went away from the ranch, even in their wildest nightmares, neither of these kids would be ready for this inferno. It was as if all the devils in hell showed up in southeast Texas, and they were flying in high and hot…
(To be continued… in Part 2)
photo credit: Red Cross
Storm chasers at work: https://youtu.be/8jWOq3lWvz0
©Mark H. Pillsbury (2011)
[Some material may be deemed inappropriate for less mature audiences]
They were storm chasers, but the spring tornado season was so active with over 100 tornadoes in June, they were looking for a change. After dating a year and working together almost two, Rick and Jessica often finished each other’s sentences. They were Sooners, trained in meteorology in one of the finest departments for weather in the country, schooled in the heart of tornado alley, Norman Oklahoma.
image: Tegtmeier, NSSL
Jessica was tall, thin and sweet. She liked the rainbows better than the thunderstorms,and on weekends at FOX25 she “did the weather,” indeed, she was proud during the broadcast when underneath her name sat the big word: Meteorologist. She wasn’t big like that girl in Dallas so many years ago who could block out most of East Texas by turning sideways, however when they split a big royalty check from the Discovery channel for video of the big twister in Millbury Ohio, she did sneak away that summer and get some work done on the second floor, so to speak. Rick loved it, and all her small-screen associates assured her good looks were the way to rise through the ranks, as long as you had talent to team with the girls.
Rick, the hard-charger of the group, founded Tarleton & Associates (or TNA like he loved to snicker when he used initials to name his company) right out of OU. He minored in business, but wanted to chase the biggest storms each spring, film them up-close and hi-def, sell the footage to networks and Cable shows that specialize in high tension reality-TV.
“I only see my cousin one weekend every couple of years, babe; can you try to be nice to me? This is an expensive date we are going on next week.” Jessica had no idea where Liberty County was; maybe she would feel better once they cut through the blue water of the Caribbean Sea.
Even though they had only a Chevy Tahoe and a satellite link to their laptops, Rick usually rode the waves of instability first, and that is where he earned his money. He arrived early at the boundary separating hot, dry air to the west from warm, moist air to the east, known as a “dryline,” and like a wildcat driller, he molded an opinion how the next cloud would play; he then drilled down into the data on the laptop (for which he paid a fortune in subscription fees) in order to back up his gambler hunch. Rick seemed to know instinctively which way to run. Jessica lingered on the idea that despite her love of weather, indeed because she understood them both, her man would have to retreat from the dangerous mistress twisters had become.
His training at OU quickly focused on what produces “meso-cyclones;” an area founded by Ted Fujita more than a decade before Rick was born. Fujita, a Japanese-American scientist, invented the recycling hypothesis of “tornadogenesis” including the spotting of RFD (rear-flank downdrafts) which showed-up clearly on radar as “hook echoes.” Rick read radar as an oil man reads 3D seismic imaging from the Gulf of Mexico; watching the bright hues of his laptop change as the data crunched through his Pentium processor. He used the cell phone to chat with other storm-chasers only when he felt behind in the race, but Rick was usually a front-runner.
Rick’s "Christmas shopping season” was between April and June, and usually the hours of operation were between 4 and 9PM, when big storms heated up. Classic stormchasing occurred in Tornado Alley, an area in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and South Dakota where the proper atmospheric conditions existed in abundance during that time of year. At 10 he watched the movie Twisters, and he was 13 when Doppler radar recorded the fastest wind speed ever measured, 318 miles per hour, in a tornado that hit the suburbs of Oklahoma City, OK, on May 3, 1999. He remembered that storm like a kid remembers how many trophies Michael Jordan collected with the Bulls.
“Why do you squeal like a school-girl when we hit the gas heading up one of those dirt roads? [toward a storm]” Jessica was ribbing Rick, because she knew he loved tornadoes more than she.
“I do not?!” Rick said.
They were headed to a cousin’s ranch in Liberty County to do a little four-wheelin, cat-fishin, and hanging out in the country as they travelled toward Houston’s new cruise ship terminal to jump on a boat. This would be a great opportunity to relax with Jessica and talk about their future. Not surprisingly, he had some very specific plans.
“Maybe it is the adrenalin rush, but when I look across the prairie and see one of those huge grey elephant trunks reaching down out of a supercell,” Rick was excited even in this retelling, “I’m not trying to joke, it pulls me closer!”
“Remember when we dove last year off the wall of Cozumel?” Rick asked Jessica, “The deep blue of the abyss was calling in a way, wasn’t it?”
“Like hell,” Jessica snapped.
“You didn’t see it?” Rick responded. “No,” said Jessica, “I mean it reminded me of the depths of hell and I wanted to go up; I didn’t like it at all.” She continued warily, “if we do this storm thing much longer Rick, it is going to be the end of us.” Jessica went silent, knowing somehow what she said had multiple facets.
Rick was lost in thought. He remembered filming at Millbury and feeling like the trap had ensnared him once, only to thrust through the howling winds back to the truck as Jessica peeled out at a 90 degree angle away from the storm path, fleeing down an anonymous country road.
They pulled up to the ranch house in mid-afternoon, and the mercury was flirting with the century mark. Both of them knew innately that the dewpoint and the air temperature were sticking too close for comfort. Rick piled out their bags and went inside to drink in cold air and maybe an adult beverage, his throat was dry from a long day in the saddle.
His cousin Clay was very different than Rick. He was older, taller, more direct, fearless, graduated as a Texas Longhorn, a Christian, and he usually made a quick shot across the bow to put you off-guard, nevertheless, Rick thought of him as a brother, and was delighted to see him.
After big back-slappin hugs, and Clay popping the tops on chilled Coronas, they settled down on the couch and turned on the satellite television. Rick hoped that Clay would ask him about what was playing on Discovery Channel, but instead he got right to the point, “How long ya’ll been dating?”
Rick and Jessica sort of grinned as they looked at each other like doubles partners in tennis, sending silent messages to each other: "You take-it!"
“Coupla years, Clay, why do you ask?” from Rick. Jessica just chuckled and sipped the cold beer.
“Trip like this almost seems like a honeymoon?” he said sardonically.
“Nope. Just getting away after a busy spring chasing dollars.” Rick was not defensive, but he did not want to get into any of this with anyone but Jessica.
“Do you think what you do together is as dangerous as bullfighting?” Clay continued, unabated.
“What do you mean ‘what we do together?’ Clay?” Rick replied cleverly, still parrying with his cousin.
“Getting right up close to a tornado, is that like snake-charming or Russian roulette?”
"Many entertainers, pilots, sports stars, explorers, journalists, cops, Marines, nurses, drivers, have to go in harm’s way to make a living, but the natural disaster that is most accessible, shocking, loud, and violent, is the tornado. It does more in 5 minutes than any army. People want to look at it up close, just like they go to the zoo. They pay to stay at a distance," said Rick, continuing, "Aren’t we meeting market demand? There are hundreds of storm-chasers in Tornado Alley?!"
“Does the number go down every year?” Clay sipped as he grinned. “Will you guys, put a car seat in the Tahoe when Junior rides along after the twister?” Jess lit up.
That one went a foot slightly outside the boundary line, but Rick was used to this kind of joking. Most of the time he dished it out more than took it.
Most biting humor is equal parts truth and jocularity.
Eventually they changed into cooler clothing and went down to the little pond at sunset, fishing (casting), talking and drinking; nothing much happened until the sun went down.
Fortunately, Clay brought frozen pizzas from CPK, and plenty of cold-longnecks. There was no more talk of relationships, storms, cruises, business, or Houston. It was time for youthful socializing, talking sports, family gossip; and Clay getting to know Jessica.
Considering all their rustic reminiscing, back to nature fun, listening to music, and staying up late into the night, they were remarkably “unplugged” for their generation. They did not know that burn warnings were up in all the counties around Liberty, and the NWS was under high alert for wildfire. They had no idea that bearing down upon their little chunk of the woods, was a ten-mile wide wall of flame.
This menace did not rain, hail, or spin. Considering how few roads went away from the ranch, even in their wildest nightmares, neither of these kids would be ready for this inferno. It was as if all the devils in hell showed up in southeast Texas, and they were flying in high and hot…
(To be continued… in Part 2)
photo credit: Red Cross
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