hooked.
• • •
Though England didn’t learn his identity until later, that man was Harry Volkman, the very first television weatherman in the state of Oklahoma and one of the first broadcast meteorologists in the entire country. A Boston native who was obsessed with the weather before he could even read, Volkman came to Oklahoma when he was discharged from the army after World War II. He enrolled at an aeronautical school in Tulsa, one of the few institutions at the time to offer a degree in meteorology. Forecasting back then was primarily viewed as a function of the military, but Volkman’s interest wasn’t just scientific. As a child he’d seen his mother petrified by the sudden appearance of thunderstorms, and he dreamed of being able to tell people what was coming so that they could be prepared and could perhaps even appreciate the weather around them. He was a precocious kid who even started his own amateur radio station at one point using his family’s roof antenna. In Tulsa he revived those skills and took a job as a disc jockey at a local radio station, where he begged the management to let him do the forecasts too. Finally they relented, and he began to do a nightly weather report.
Even in a place like Oklahoma, where the weather has such an impact on people’s lives, many of Volkman’s colleagues had no actual knowledge of its most basic science. A colleague who introduced him could barely pronounce his new title. On air the man called him the station’s “meaty-e-rologist.” In 1949 KOTV, Tulsa’s first television station, went on air, and Volkman pitched himself as a forecaster. The station’s staff dismissed him, telling him they weren’t even sure they would do weather. A few months later, after he’d taken a job working as a janitor and doing other odd jobs at KOTV, Volkman finally got his shot. He went on air with a plastic map of Oklahoma and illustrated his forecast by drawing over it with a grease pencil that could be wiped away after every show.
The U.S. Weather Bureau, which handled forecasting at the time, shared only broad sketches of what it thought the skies would do, and few people outside the military had access to weather radars. Volkman had learned Morse code in the army as part of a team that decoded weather updates sent between units to protect artillery. In Tulsa, and later in Oklahoma City, he used a shortwave radio to tap into those transmissions, listening to coded messages sent to and from nearby military bases with atmospheric observations and forecasts. He used them to craft his own forecasts.
In March 1952 Volkman moved to Oklahoma City and joined WKY-TV—or, as the locals knew it, Channel 4. (Decades later it would change its call letters to KFOR, as it is known today.) By then the Weather Bureau knew he’d been cracking military forecasts—but it didn’t stop him. In his first week on the job a potentially deadly outbreak of severe storms erupted, threatening Oklahoma City. With the skies growing ever more ominous, Volkman and his boss, Buddy Sugg, a former navy officer, heard transmissions over the radio that a “tornado alert”—the early version of a “tornado watch”—had been issued by forecasters at nearby Tinker Air Force Base. Officials there had started to take the weather seriously after two tornadoes hit the base within days of each other in 1947, almost wiping out its fleet of B-2 bombers, but though their forecasts were considered among the most accurate in the air force, they were kept secret from the public. Some were leaked to Volkman, who was still monitoring the coded messages, but he was limited in what he could do with the information. The FCC had actually banned radio and television broadcasters from using the words “tornado” or “tornado alert”—concerned that they could cause mass panic. Sugg would have none of it. He felt that to not alert the public was to needlessly put lives at risk. He told Volkman they
• • •
Though England didn’t learn his identity until later, that man was Harry Volkman, the very first television weatherman in the state of Oklahoma and one of the first broadcast meteorologists in the entire country. A Boston native who was obsessed with the weather before he could even read, Volkman came to Oklahoma when he was discharged from the army after World War II. He enrolled at an aeronautical school in Tulsa, one of the few institutions at the time to offer a degree in meteorology. Forecasting back then was primarily viewed as a function of the military, but Volkman’s interest wasn’t just scientific. As a child he’d seen his mother petrified by the sudden appearance of thunderstorms, and he dreamed of being able to tell people what was coming so that they could be prepared and could perhaps even appreciate the weather around them. He was a precocious kid who even started his own amateur radio station at one point using his family’s roof antenna. In Tulsa he revived those skills and took a job as a disc jockey at a local radio station, where he begged the management to let him do the forecasts too. Finally they relented, and he began to do a nightly weather report.
Even in a place like Oklahoma, where the weather has such an impact on people’s lives, many of Volkman’s colleagues had no actual knowledge of its most basic science. A colleague who introduced him could barely pronounce his new title. On air the man called him the station’s “meaty-e-rologist.” In 1949 KOTV, Tulsa’s first television station, went on air, and Volkman pitched himself as a forecaster. The station’s staff dismissed him, telling him they weren’t even sure they would do weather. A few months later, after he’d taken a job working as a janitor and doing other odd jobs at KOTV, Volkman finally got his shot. He went on air with a plastic map of Oklahoma and illustrated his forecast by drawing over it with a grease pencil that could be wiped away after every show.
The U.S. Weather Bureau, which handled forecasting at the time, shared only broad sketches of what it thought the skies would do, and few people outside the military had access to weather radars. Volkman had learned Morse code in the army as part of a team that decoded weather updates sent between units to protect artillery. In Tulsa, and later in Oklahoma City, he used a shortwave radio to tap into those transmissions, listening to coded messages sent to and from nearby military bases with atmospheric observations and forecasts. He used them to craft his own forecasts.
In March 1952 Volkman moved to Oklahoma City and joined WKY-TV—or, as the locals knew it, Channel 4. (Decades later it would change its call letters to KFOR, as it is known today.) By then the Weather Bureau knew he’d been cracking military forecasts—but it didn’t stop him. In his first week on the job a potentially deadly outbreak of severe storms erupted, threatening Oklahoma City. With the skies growing ever more ominous, Volkman and his boss, Buddy Sugg, a former navy officer, heard transmissions over the radio that a “tornado alert”—the early version of a “tornado watch”—had been issued by forecasters at nearby Tinker Air Force Base. Officials there had started to take the weather seriously after two tornadoes hit the base within days of each other in 1947, almost wiping out its fleet of B-2 bombers, but though their forecasts were considered among the most accurate in the air force, they were kept secret from the public. Some were leaked to Volkman, who was still monitoring the coded messages, but he was limited in what he could do with the information. The FCC had actually banned radio and television broadcasters from using the words “tornado” or “tornado alert”—concerned that they could cause mass panic. Sugg would have none of it. He felt that to not alert the public was to needlessly put lives at risk. He told Volkman they
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