Gary England, star meteorologist in Tornado Alley, dies at 85

Boston Globe

6 days ago

During live coverage that day, England talked to a storm chaser who at one point described an ominous development: A tornado funnel had quickly popped up near a much wider one.
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
'You folks in the path of this storm have time to get below ground,' England said. 'You need to be below ground with this storm. This is a deadly tornado.'
Advertisement
Recalling the severity of his warning, he told NPR in 2009, 'I knew that one would get their attention because I'd never said it before and I've never said it since.'
The regard that citizens felt for England was reflected in messages painted by survivors of those tornadoes on the wreckage of their houses. One read, 'God Bless Gary England,' and another said, 'Thanks Gary England for Getting Us Out Alive!!'
England's coverage of the 1999 tornadoes earned him a National Headliner Award the next year. In 2009, he and his team received an Edward R. Murrow Award.
Advertisement
'In the eyes of most Oklahomans, England is less a meteorologist than a benevolent weather god who routinely saves everyone's lives,' Sam Anderson wrote in The New York Times Magazine in a 2013 profile of England called 'The Weather God of Oklahoma City.' 'He has become a cult figure: a combination of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Foghorn Leghorn, Atticus Finch, Dan Rather, Zeus and Uncle Jesse from 'The Dukes of Hazzard.''
England's renown in Tornado Alley -- the central U.S. region frequently hit by twisters -- led to his serving as a technical adviser to 'Twister,' a 1996 film about storm chasers starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. He appeared in the opening scene as a forecaster giving a tornado warning on TV.
Gary Alan England was born Oct. 3, 1939, in Seiling, Oklahoma. His father, Lesley, and mother, Hazel (Stong) England, owned a grocery store.
While growing up, England took photographs of storm clouds and was transfixed by the TV reports of Harry Volkman, a weatherperson in Oklahoma.
'I was staring, and I turned to Dad and said, 'Dad, I want to be one of those,' and I pointed to the TV,' England said in an oral history interview with Oklahoma State University in 2013. 'He said, 'Well, what is he?' and I said, 'I don't know, but I want to be one.''
After graduating from high school, England served in the U.S. Navy, joining the Navy Weather Service. He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and meteorology from the University of Oklahoma in 1965, and then worked for a weather forecasting firm in New Orleans.
Advertisement
He was hired in 1971 as a forecaster at KTOK Radio in Oklahoma City; a year later, he joined KWTV. He had little else to work with except for hand-drawn maps and a heavy reliance on the National Weather Service.
'In the beginning, I would only warn Jane a tornado was coming because John's house blew away,' he told the Los Angeles Times in 2013.
But he urged KWTV management to build his toolbox, first with weather radar in 1973. In 1981, England became probably the first weather forecaster to use Doppler radar, which detected precipitation as well as wind speed and direction, vastly improving tornado warning times.
Having followed research about the military use of Doppler radar, he made a presentation to the station's president, John Griffin.
'He said, 'Gary, you have never misled me on what we need,'' England said in the oral history. 'So we helped in the development and installed the world's first commercial Doppler radar right here.'
Soon after, he said, he was watching the Doppler radar of what appeared to be a tornado. He called the local sheriff, who went outside and told him that he saw a funnel cloud.
'Now I knew I had something, so I issued the warning,' England said. 'It really upset the weather service but, you know, I wasn't going to wait and call them: 'Guys, is it OK if we issue the warning?''
Robert Henson, a meteorologist and the author of 'Weather on the Air: A History of Broadcast Meteorology' (2010), said in an interview, 'Gary had a reputation for being more aggressive with warnings than the National Weather Service because he had Doppler before other local stations. A warning doesn't always mean a tornado is out there, but he established that he was laser-focused on the threat.'
Advertisement
In the early 1990s, England helped initiate 'First Warning,' an automated map in the corner of TV screens that gives weather warnings, and 'Storm Tracker,' which shows a storm's path and an estimate for when a severe storm would arrive in a location.
When KWTV celebrated 40 years of on-air achievements with a full page newspaper ad in 1994, nearly half were attributable to England and his weather team.
He retired in 2013, a few months after a tornado, on May 20, ripped through parts of Oklahoma City, in particular the suburb of Moore, and killed about two dozen people. Another struck the suburb of El Reno 11 days later.
After the latter storm, he told his wife, Mary England, that he had tired of his job.
'I just didn't want to do it anymore,' he told the chamber of commerce in Norman, Oklahoma, in early 2014. 'All that death and destruction.'
After leaving KWTV, England became the vice president of corporate relations and weather development at Griffin Communications (now Griffin Media), the station's parent company, and was the consultant meteorologist-in-residence at the University of Oklahoma, home of the National Weather Center.
His wife, formerly Mary Carlisle, survives him, along with his daughter, Molly Lutosky; two grandchildren; and a brother, Phil.
In his decades tracking tornadoes, England found that no two were alike.
'They kind of have a life cycle just like a human,' he said in the oral history. 'It's shorter, but they behave a little differently. They do different things. They turn right, they turn left, they don't turn, and all of them are a little bit different.'
Advertisement
He added, 'On camera, they may all look the same, but everything is a learning process in this business. It really is.'
This article originally appeared in