The Weatherman

by Steve Thayer

  “Just a minute, Dixon. I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m confused. Is there a tornado warning? Has one been spotted?”

  “No, Ron. Officially we’ve been in a severe thunderstorm watch for the past hour. That watch was issued by the Severe Storms Forecast Center in Kansas City, which is fine if you like your weather from Kansas City. But I was just out on the Nicollet Walk, where I saw thunderheads topping out at sixty thousand feet and the wind was wrapping around me like a blanket.”

  “But the National Weather Service office at the airport has not issued a tornado warning?”

  “No, they haven’t. But not to worry, I called out there and woke the guy up. It should be coming any minute.”

  “So you’re predicting a tornado out of this?”

  “I don’t predict the weather. I read the weather. This storm has tornado written all over it, and right now it’s over the metropolitan area.” Dixon Bell looked into the camera and spoke in measured southern tones that held viewers spellbound. “Tornadoes do not sweep you up and drop you in the land of Oz. They kill. Splitsecond decisions mean life or death. Real quick, what to do. At home, go to the basement immediately. If you can’t do that, get into a closet, or a bathroom. Get under something sturdy. If you’re watching this at school, go to an interior hallway on the lowest floor. Stay out of auditoriums and gymnasiums, or anything with a free-span roof. Same in office buildings. Stand in an interior hallway on a lower floor. Get away from windows. Remember, any shelter is better than being outside. We don’t know where this thing is going to drop. As you can see on the radar screen . . .”

  As the Weatherman explained to viewers the storm cell passing over them, Chris Mack was talking in his ear. “Throw it to Andrea. Ten seconds.”

  The Ping-Pong continued. Dixon Bell played along. He had done all that he could. He wrapped it up with a plea to take shelter, then turned to the woman he loved. “Andrea?”

  “Dixon, one man who might give us a clue about a possible tornado is Skyhawk 7pilot Bob Buckridge. Bucky, where are you, and what are you seeing up there?”

  I’m up in the air in this real neat helicopter and I see a whole bunch of wind and rain and stuff like that. Any other questions, you ignorant . . . Bob Buckridge squeezed the microphone trigger on the control stick. “Yeah, Andrea, we’re over Bloomington now and we’re dogging a particularly nasty-looking cloud moving towards downtown. Dixon is right about the skies. As you can see on your monitors, this is an ugly storm approaching.” Rain and hail beat down on the chopper, assaulting the cockpit. Lightning shot across the Plexiglas. Anybody watching could see his color television set turn to black and white, raindrops splattering across the screen.

  Now the producer was in Andrea’s ear. “Take it back, Andrea. He hasn’t got anything, goddamnit.”

  “Well, Bucky,” said Andrea, “I wouldn’t stay up there too much longer if I were you.”

  Safer here than in that ejector seat you’re sitting in. Buckridge squeezed the trigger again. “Right, Andrea. It’s getting pretty bad up here. We’re coming home.” That was his signature line. Each weekday as a kicker to the five o’clock report the anchors would turn to the studio monitor. “Now let’s take one last look at traffic with Bob Buckridge. Bucky?” Buckridge would give the traffic report, then; “That’s it from Skyhawk 7. We’re coming home.” The anchors would turn to the camera. Big smiles. “And that’s it from Sky High News.” Cue schlocky music. Pull back camera two. Countdown to network. Fade. Clear.

  But this day’s weather would write a script with a far different ending.

  The tornado sprung from the sky over the southwest suburb of Eden Prairie, and so for the state history books the deadly twister took its name. It skipped over hilly grasslands and unfinished homes, at first doing little damage. Then it quickly found its bearings and bore down on the heavily populated suburb of Edina.

  Witnesses caught in the storm’s path were stunned by the speed with which it struck. Edina was hit before the National Weather Service could sound the warning sirens. It touched ground first on fashionable France Avenue, known for its shopping and entertainment. There the funnel entertained shoppers by dancing past the Edina movie theater, grabbing the tall EDINA sign over the marquee and snapping it in two, sending the first three letters crashing to the sidewalk, where they ended upside down in an explosion of sparks. The clock in the movie theater stopped at 5:08 P.M. Storefront windows exploded next, some from flying debris, others from the pressure. Mannequins dressed in the latest Paris fashions were hurled into the street. A flower shop simply disintegrated. Rose petals settled on the ruins. Edina police would report the first casualties, shocked faces staring up into the blackness, fresh flowers sprinkled over them.

  “Just about fifteen seconds of turmoil . . . of hell . . . unreal. . . . I just can’t believe it . . . I’ve never seen anything like this before . . . and no warning . . . nothing . . . no warning at all . . . no sirens . . . no sirens until about ten minutes after it hit . . . unbelievable.”

  Bob Buckridge spotted the tornado right after he threw it back to Andrea. It came swirling out of the southwest, heading northeast, an awesome cone of descending smoke with a counterclockwise spin. The vortex cloud was black, but as it began to close range it quickly turned muddy brown as dirt, debris, and the theater marquee got sucked into the whirl. The crafty pilot had his headset on, tuning out the unreal world spinning around him, but Kitt Karson could hear what sounded like the roar of F-16s taking off on another mission. Thoughts of heading home, thoughts of their own safety got sucked away. Instinct and adrenaline took command. Buckridge circled clockwise and snuck up behind the monster.

  The tornado hopped like a stone skipping on water, sometimes skipping entire neighborhoods, sometimes cutting a swath three blocks wide as it roared northeast from Edina through South Minneapolis toward lakes dotted with sailboats and swimmers. Homes were shredded as if by an eggbeater, torn down to their foundations.

  “We were looking out the window and we saw bricks flying through the air, pieces of houses, everything . . . and a rolling kind of a cloud in the sky . . . and I said, ‘Everybody down the basement, down the basement’ . . . and the baby was upstairs sleeping, so I ran upstairs . . . I couldn’t get the door open . . . there was such suction . . . and I was really afraid . . . and the pressure was building up in the house . . . I pulled and pulled and finally it opened . . . I pulled the baby out and I ran down the stairs . . . and I could hear crashing . . . and everybody’s ears were popping . . . Then I heard this train noise, and then that woman screaming. It was terrifying.”

  At times dust and debris obscured the funnel. Buckridge flew so close they could look up and down the shaft, which extended a thousand feet from cloud to ground and swayed gently. Kitt aimed his camera right down the spout to where it narrowed at the bottom rim and the tip ripped up everything on earth. Despite all the weapons of destruction he had seen unleashed on his native country, he’d never witnessed anything like this. And when they moved in close, the roar was deafening, and when they dropped back there was a high-pitched, blood-curdling scream that made the photographer’s skin crawl.

  Back in the Channel 7 control room producer Chris Mack could not believe the pictures Skyhawk 7was beaming in. He grabbed the microphone in front of him. “Andrea, toss it to Bucky—now!” He grabbed the director next to him. “Go to it, goddamnit!” He looked up at the small monitor where the Weatherman stood. “’His own safety,’” he said mockingly. “He’s got the son of a bitch chasing a tornado.” Bob Buckridge was on the air, not waiting for any cue, sounding the warning as dispassionately as he could. “We have a tornado on the ground causing extensive damage. This is a major twister doing major damage. It is moving northeast at about forty miles per hour in a line from Eden Prairie to Lake Harriet to downtown. Anybody in this path should seek shelter immediately. Again, we have a tornado on the ground in the metro area.”

  At the anchor desk Ron Shea got his two bits on the air. �
��It would be wise if everybody watching this headed for the basement. Bucky, I don’t know if you can hear me, but don’t you think you should back off from that thing?”

  Andrea chimed in. “Yeah, we’re really worried about you.”

  “Negative,” the pilot shouted. “Stay off the radio!”

  Within minutes the feed to Channel 7 was picked up and broadcast by the other TV stations. Radio stations plugged into the audio. As Buckridge described what he saw, and Kitt held his camera steady, a hundred sailboats moored at the Lake Harriet Yacht Club capsized, the masts snapping like toothpicks. The park pavilion where the summer concerts were held was destroyed. The tornado continued its dance of death and devastation for three more miles, across Lakewood Cemetery, where Minnesota’s famous were buried, and through the heart of trendy Uptown. It rearranged headstones, ripped off the roofs of houses, uprooted trees, and downed power lines. Cars were all but split in two as heavy branches crashed down on them. Some drivers made it out. Others did not. A tree limb pierced a house wall like a thrown spear.

  “Just a big cloud swirling . . . this really big cloud swirling all over . . . it sounded like a locomotive, exactly like they say it does, except for that screaming woman. There was this big piece of sheet metal . . . and it just flew right over me and into the tree, and I saw the tree go right into the house like a missile . . . It was just unbelievable . . . I couldn’t believe I was alive.”

  The tornado skirted the east shore of Lake of the Isles, where stately homes stood. Then it skipped across Loring Park on the edge of downtown. A man-on-thestreet theory says tornadoes do not strike at cities. That theory is all hot air and wind. Tornadoes are not impressed by tall buildings.

  Bob Buckridge noted his air speed: forty-six knots. The huge twisting cloud sometimes caused the ground to disappear. He checked his altimeter. They had climbed to eight hundred feet. With a quick glance at the monitor he made sure Kitt’s pictures were being fed back to the station. Playing chicken with the twister, he could just barely hear the debris attacking his ship. He feared Kitt, hanging out the door by a seat belt, would be hit. And there were jolts. But he never stopped talking. “Anybody in a downtown building should take shelter immediately—that includes Sky High News. The tornado is on the ground, headed your way.”

  In a mass show of bravado, or of stupidity, all newsroom personnel held their positions.

  Dave Cadieux, the photographer Gayle the Ghoul had sent to the roof, wrapped one arm around a steel pole, leveled his twenty-thousand-dollar camera on the tripod, and centered the twister in the special four-thousand-dollar lens. He was hanging on for dear life when through that lens he saw Skyhawk 7swing out from behind the funnel. He almost burst with pride in his attempt not to burst in the wind. If they lived, it would be promo material for years to come.

  The tornado tore across the roof of the Sky High parking ramp, lifting a red Honda Prelude and slamming it into a huge green transformer. The explosion was blinding, knocking out the television equipment below the ramp. The murder scene was completely blown away, any last bit of evidence sucked up and destroyed. Pressure shattered the southwest window in the newsroom, every shard of glass sucked outward.

  After deflating the roof of the Metrodome, the supposedly weatherproof home of the Twins and the Vikings, the twister jumped the Mississippi River, faked back into the clouds, then pounced on St. Paul. It tore through the drive-through of a Burger King restaurant. Destruction was instantaneous. At an Amoco station it tore the gas pumps from their moorings and sent them whirling through the car wash. It cut across the northeast corner of the capital city, dipping into quiet weekday neighborhoods sucking up trees and homes and lives. Some victims were carried by the wind two hundred yards, their bodies horribly bruised and cut. From there the twister tripped across Highway 36 and set its sights on one of the largest shopping malls in Minnesota. Skyhawk 7 stayed with it all the way.

  “The tornado is now on the ground in Roseville. If you are in the Rosedale Mall, go to the basement of Dayton’s department store. If you are watching this at the Rosedale Mall, get everybody to the basement immediately. You are in the direct path of the tornado. You have only seconds.”

  A minute later, in one of the most sacrilegious acts in the history of Minnesota, this cyclone from hell audaciously attacked a Dayton’s department store.

  “It just tore the roof off Dayton’s!” Buckridge barked into his mouthpiece. A thousand stones pinged off the Plexiglas. He saw Kitt’s head snap back. The vibrations were worsening. “We’re taking hits here! I’m coming around! I’m coming around!” He retreated in a clockwise circle, gained control, and approached again.

  “I was driving to the mall when I heard the helicopter pilot on the radio talking about a tornado coming . . . I guess I should have turned around and gone home but I drove to the mall instead. As soon as I got in the door, I heard the Dayton’s people announce a tornado was coming, and a man was yelling ‘Get in back! Get away from those windows!’Then the lights went out . . . and I looked out into the parking lot and saw cars spinning around, so I took cover behind a big couch . . . Then this train went overhead . . . and I heard this woman screaming for help . . . but I couldn’t find her . . . It was pretty scary for a while there.”

  Bob Buckridge lined the tornado up with the visible horizon to the northeast and rattled off the communities he knew so well. “If you live in a line along Roseville, Vadnais Heights, White Bear Lake, Mahtomedi, Stillwater, or St. Croix County, Wisconsin, you should take shelter immediately. The tornado is on the ground and coming your way.”

  The tornado carved its deepest path through the St. Paul suburb of Roseville, flattening every house in its way. Yards for miles around were littered with neighbors’ homes. Church bell towers were silenced. By now the tornado had been on the ground for more than ten minutes, but with Dixon Bell’s early warning, and Bob Buckridge’s blow-by-blow descriptions going out over every radio and TV station in town, half of the metropolitan area was either underground or seeking shelter.

  In once romantic White Bear Lake, immortalized in the short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the great tornado wrote a new chapter on urban sprawl, flattening one tacky development after another. As it steam-rollered by, no house, no boat could resist for even a fraction of a second the tragic ending.

  “It was like a jet coming over the top of our house. Then our house was gone.”

  Skyhawk 7 followed the tornado over the woods east of the Twin Cities. Uprooted trees were left sticking in the air. Trees left standing had the bark stripped from their trunks. It twisted across the scenic St. Croix River and into Wisconsin. Then, having spent its fury in a thirty-five-mile path through the heart of the metropolitan area, the Eden Prairie tornado disappeared into the cloud from which it had emerged a half-hour earlier.

  Bob Buckridge watched the funnel slip back into the heavens. In the end there was a blinding, unnatural light with a blue tinge to it that lit up the black cloud like a fluorescent bulb. Then it was gone. He threw the broadcast back to the studio. His once smooth-running ship was bucking. His knuckles wrapped around the control stick were deathly white, scraped and bleeding. He checked his instruments. His eye caught the monitor: a close-up of Andrea. God, she’s beautiful, he thought. Then, like a cruel joke, they quick-cut to Dixon Bell. The pilot chuckled. “From heaven to hell.” He circled around and brought Skyhawk 7 face to face with the back edge of the storm that had given the tornado birth. Home now lay to the west, two rivers and a mountain of violent weather away. The dark sky was tinged with red. Rainfall was heavy. Hail raked his ship like groundfire. Lightning bolts cracked around him. Below him was the St. Croix Valley, its rolling hills studded with trees and mined with lakes and streams.

  Strong north winds whipped rain through the cockpit. Kitt was loading a new tape into his camera, seemingly unperturbed by events. His hair was dripping wet. His face was red. Blood trickled from his forehead. His hands were full, so he just smiled up at his p
ilot friend and nodded. I follow you anywhere.

  Buckridge knew his ship was hurting. The vibrations would not smooth out. Perhaps his instinct told him he could make it, or maybe his foolish pride would not let him put it down, but he decided to try for Lake Elmo, a small airfield minutes away. He pulled in all the power he could and climbed to one thousand feet.

  Ron Shea was trying his best to help viewers understand what they had just seen, what they all had been through together. “The special quality of life we enjoy here in Minnesota has been shattered.” He assured them reporters were on their way to the worst-hit areas and advised people to stay away. Andrea Labore had not spoken a word since Buckridge told her to shut up. Shea tossed it to Dixon Bell.

  “The tornado’s off the ground, but the storm’s not over,” the Weatherman warned. The radar screen was on the air. “You can see the storm cell passing right over the metropolitan area. There are still some powerful winds in that cell, and there’s a lot of debris blowing around. The all clear has not been sounded. Stay inside and away from windows.”

  Ron Shea interrupted. “Dixon, we’re going to check back in with Bob Buckridge. He’s in that storm and he may have something for us. Bucky?”There was a pause. “Bucky, are you hearing us now?” Another delay.