by Holly Bailey
Short and slight, with wheat-colored blond hair that had grown thinner over the decades, he did not look or act like the grandfather he was. He was known to sprint through the studio at prime moments of weather drama, thanks in part to the running shoes he’d taken to wearing with his suit since the camera never showed his feet. But he increasingly felt his age—especially during storm season, when the station would interrupt its regular programming to track bad weather as it moved across the state. Like other television stations in Oklahoma City, KWTV would sometimes go for hours without a commercial break during particularly dangerous storms, coverage that weather-crazy viewers around the state had come to expect. England was the star of the show, fueled by little more than pure adrenaline and the occasional sip of Diet Sprite—since tornadoes don’t tend to pause for bathroom breaks.
He would stare into the camera, talking to viewers for hours on end about the approaching storms while micromanaging the show around him. He directed the storm chasers out in the field and monitored as many as a dozen live video feeds from cameras mounted on cars and on the station’s helicopter, which flew into the storm to give viewers at home a bird’s-eye view of the weather. Behind him was a tiny army of young meteorologists, many recent graduates of the University of Oklahoma’s weather school, who had grown up watching him on TV. They now worked in his shadow, hoping to learn everything they could from the man who was revered as the godfather of weather coverage among storm junkies.
Since joining KWTV in 1972, he had pushed every boundary of television weather coverage. Some weathermen thought nothing of relying simply on data and radar information from the National Weather Service, but England considered himself as more than just a meteorologist. He was a soldier on the front lines who did whatever possible to keep his viewers safe from Mother Nature’s wrath, even if it meant violating protocol.
People still talked about a storm that had hit Union City in 1973, when England had broken into programming and declared a tornado warning minutes before the National Weather Service had. He had done so again and again over the years, much to the chagrin of scientists who criticized England as brash and reckless. A few years later, after reading an article that suggested Doppler radar could be a major advance in tracking tornadoes, England persuaded Channel 9 to invest in its own Doppler—even when it was unclear whether the technology really worked. England helped invent the tiny map at the bottom of a television screen that warned of coming storms, and under his guidance KWTV became the first station to deploy its helicopter to chase tornadoes. But it was his friendly folksiness and his tendency to be right about the weather that kept people tuned in. Sometimes it seemed he had a direct line up into the sky.
Over the years, KWTV, looking to spice up its coverage, had given him new toys to play with. For the 2013 storm season, it was a touch-screen radar that operated like a giant iPad, which at first mystified England, who had thought of himself as tech savvy. “Uh, all righty,” he said, as he poked at the screen trying to figure out how to zoom in and out during its first night on air. But in truth, none of the toys mattered. He himself was the star attraction—the hero of a generation of Oklahomans who either credited him with saving their lives or thought of him as the best source of entertainment in a state obsessed with storm coverage.
Long before The Weather Channel introduced tornado spotting as an adventure sport to most of America, weather coverage had become a tense and obsessive form of reality TV in Oklahoma, with local meteorologists and storm chasers playing key supporting roles in Mother Nature’s unpredictable script. England was the most famous and enduring character of this strange drama. On most days he had the stage presence of a small-town boy made good, with a folksy demeanor and deep Oklahoma twang that would be a career killer for most broadcast journalists today.
But his sunny presence on television could shift in an instant when he detected a storm brewing. Over his decades on air, viewers had come to know that when he took off his suit jacket and got serious, things were going to be bad, really bad. When he told people to take cover or to get out of the path of a storm, there was no question that they had better do it—or they could very well die. England had unfortunately been proved right again and again over his career.
In 2010 a popular Oklahoma City blog called The Lost Ogle conducted a poll of its readers to gauge the most powerful person in Oklahoma. England came in first, followed by Jesus in second place. From then on, the blog jokingly referred to him as “Lord England”—a nickname that to many wasn’t so far from the truth.
While KWTV’s ratings went up and down over the years, it was hard to think of anyone in Oklahoma who was more known or revered. His rivals at other stations sometimes beat him in the ratings, but no one came close to his stature. Elected officials privately cringed in fear that he might get the political bug someday and put them out of a job. After every big storm, lawmakers—from the governor to members of the state legislature—were quick to tell their constituents that they had consulted with Gary England about the weather, seeking his advice on storm preparations. In most cases he had far more credibility than they did.
But after forty-one years on the air, he was bigger than politics. He was a living legend, immortalized in newspaper cartoons as something of an antitornado superhero. His office was crowded with artwork that people from all over the state had gifted him at meet-and-greets. One painted him as a grinning hero in a cowboy hat wrangling an ominous, wild twister. Another cast him as a robed Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars—Oklahoma’s “only hope” against dangerous weather. At the station’s front desk, visitors passed by a giant bronze bust of a smiling Gary England that had been given to the meteorologist in 2007, when he was named one of Oklahoma’s “100 Heroes and Outlaws” as part of the state’s centennial celebration. The selection committee, England liked to joke, had somehow mistaken him for a hero.
England had mixed feelings about the bust, which he passed on his way into the studio most days. He was flattered, but he was also a little embarrassed. He knew how lucky he was—a boy from a tiny town in northwestern Oklahoma who’d considered being a pig farmer until he’d caught the weather bug. He’d been recognized by the state for doing a job he absolutely loved. Sometimes the sculpture seemed a little too much like a memorial. Despite the ambitious meteorologists waiting in the wings in anticipation that he’d soon retire, England wasn’t done yet. He loved his job. He loved his viewers, and they loved him. And he was obsessed with finding ways to keep them safer from storms that seemed only to be getting bigger and deadlier every year.
He saw his job as more than being a local weatherman. It was a public duty, a calling, to keep people safe, and he wasn’t ready to walk away from that responsibility just yet. Some days, he did wonder if it wasn’t starting to be too much. It wasn’t the physical demands of the job, the hours on air, the giving up of any semblance of personal life for weeks on end every spring. It was the burden he felt to protect people, both viewers and his staff in the field. In the end, he knew he was just one man pitted against the elements, but knowing that didn’t make it easier when people died. He had dedicated his life to trying to prevent mass casualties from tornadoes like those that had hit towns around him when he was a kid—he’d never forgotten the storm in 1947 that wiped out Woodward, Oklahoma, killing more than one hundred people. But in recent years the pressure he felt to save people’s lives had started to consume him.
To his viewers and even many of his closest friends, family, and coworkers, he was his usual cheerful, folksy self—at least when the weather wasn’t bad. But privately he was haunted by storms. He couldn’t understand how in a state where people were so obsessed with weather, where local media was saturated with warnings, so many people continued to die. He constantly worried about whether he had done everything within his power to protect people. Had he said the right words or issued the warnings fast enough for people to take shelter? What more could he have done?
He had always been a bit of a worrier, consumed by thoughts like these. But his anxiety intensified after May 3, 1999, when a milewide twister wiped out parts of Moore and south Oklahoma City. That storm had changed his life. For the first time in his long career, England had essentially narrated live a nearly two-and-a-half-hour trail of destruction as KWTV’s helicopter hovered in the sky capturing every second of the monster storm churning its way into some of the most heavily populated parts of his viewing area. He was stunned as he saw debris from homes and cars flying through the air, carried like Matchbox toys. In his most calm but stern voice, he’d warned people they should get below ground or they would very likely die. But many hadn’t listened.
Thirty-six people had died—the biggest death toll in the state from a tornado in decades. With more than 10 miles of neighborhoods completely wiped off the map, many believe the death toll would have been far higher had it not been for the local weather coverage. In the days after the storm, state and local officials praised Oklahoma City’s weathermen for their handling of the storm. England was lauded for saving lives with his specific warnings pinpointing exactly where the tornado’s trajectory would take it and calling out street names in an urgent attempt to clear out the neighborhoods before it was too late. Many survivors credited him with protecting them that day. As the massive cleanup began, some spray-painted messages on whatever remained of their wiped-out homes. “Gary England saved my life,” one message, scrawled on a mangled garage door, read. “Thank you, Gary England!” said another.
In response, he smiled and somewhat bashfully accepted the praise. When asked about it, he agreed that things could have been far worse, but inside he was torn apart in a way that he had never been by the hundreds of storms he had seen in his career. Even as the state moved on, rebuilding as it always did, he obsessed over the people who had been killed that day. Why had they died? Did they not know the storm was coming? Had they not taken cover? What could he have done to reach them more effectively?
“Tornadoes can be very majestic when they are out in the fields somewhere, when no one is around,” he often told people. “But my god, when you put them in a populated area, it is terrifying.” As Oklahoma City expanded and cities like Moore built out into the rural farmland tornadoes were known to frequent, the potential scale and scope of the devastation was growing.
• • •
Back in 1999, a few weeks after the May 3 storm, England took an afternoon off work and pulled the coroner’s reports on the people who had been killed that day. It was the beginning of a dark tradition he would secretly pursue over the next decade after every deadly tornado as he embarked on a desperate search to understand how people had died and maybe learn how he could save more lives the next time disaster struck.
England was horrified by the injuries he read about in the coroner’s reports. Some victims had tried to run from the tornado and been sucked up and spit out, their bodies literally pulverized by the storm. Others had been killed when they were hit in the head by flying debris. He quietly talked to doctors about the injuries of those who had survived—and was amazed and shocked by what he heard. He was told about people whose skin had almost been sandblasted off by the storm—leaving their bones and tendons exposed. One man’s eyeball had literally exploded when he was hit by debris, but he lived too. Another victim had been impaled in the throat by a two-by-four.
He didn’t tell anyone what he had done. He felt it was too morbid, too dark. But on air he began issuing unusual decrees for subsequent storms. In addition to his usual mantra urging people to “take your safety precautions” and “get below ground,” he started telling people to wear helmets and shatterproof goggles, along with heavy, long-sleeved clothing. He told them to dress as if they were going to war. He suspected some of his fellow meteorologists might think he had gone off the deep end. He was encouraging his viewers to do something that even the National Weather Service hadn’t endorsed. But he didn’t care. “Twenty percent of those killed on May 3 died of brain injuries,” he said. “I’m from Seiling, Oklahoma, and that to me says wear a helmet.”
Fourteen years later, in 2013, the National Weather Service began issuing similar directives about helmets and clothing—which made England feel somewhat vindicated. But by then he had grown more obsessive in other ways about his responsibility to his viewers. KWTV had given him a “lifetime” contract to stay on air until he felt like he wasn’t, as the station’s owner put it, “having fun” anymore. And more and more, the joy he had found in his job was vanishing, erased by the suffocating burden of protecting people from the erratic whims of Mother Nature. Since the 1999 tornado, England had felt intense pressure to get everything exactly right—his words, his mannerisms. Over the years, he had grown more and more worried that any innocent misstep—such as the mistakes that had plagued some of his weather rivals at the other local stations—could result in death. He had always reviewed the tapes of coverage after the storms, but he began to take it a step further.
During every major weather event, he not only had the station tape the live coverage on air. He asked that another camera roam throughout the studio to film him and his staff at work. Afterward, he went over the tapes again and again, watching and listening carefully to everything he or anyone else—his storm trackers, his colleagues in studio—had said. He was like a football coach looking for any weakness in his team as he tried to plan the perfect plays against an enemy that was largely unpredictable. He would review the tapes dozens of times—sometimes that very night, in part because he couldn’t sleep. It was a routine he’d long ago gotten used to—the sleepless nights in the springtime, the nightmares of what the season would have in store. Sitting at his computer on May 20, he was plagued by questions that had come to haunt him after every major storm: How many people had died, and what could he have done to save them?
When he had left the station after midnight, the extent of casualties had still been unknown. But he had been unnerved by the footage of what he’d seen of the storm to the southeast of Oklahoma City—cars demolished and swept off the road and homes wiped clear of their foundations. A grandmother had been rescued from a bathtub that had been lifted from her home and lodged in a tree. It was a miracle, and he hoped there would be others, but deep down he always assumed the worst. How many people had died? The question haunted him as he made his fifteen-minute commute home, where his wife was still awake and waiting for him as she did after almost every storm.
They’d met at Southwestern Oklahoma State University fifty-three years earlier. England had just left the navy, and though he was in school pursuing his dream of being a weatherman, he’d spent more time studying girls in his first semester than hitting the books. He was on a date with another girl when he saw her walking between two cars—a tiny strawberry-blonde cheerleader with the most beautiful blue eyes he’d ever seen. As she passed directly in front of him, he reached out, grabbed her arm, and pulled her into a kiss. It was love at first sight. His date punched him and stormed away, and England grinned at the stunned cheerleader. Her name was Mary, and even though she thought he was a bit of a rascal, they were inseparable after that. Soul mates, they said. A year later they were married. They had one daughter, Molly, who now lived in Southern California with her husband and two daughters—far away from the wild weather of Oklahoma.
As he kissed Mary good night, his mind was elsewhere. Checking his computer one last time, he saw that there was still no word on fatalities. Climbing into bed he was tired—but it was the kind of tired where you can’t sleep. How many people had died? The question wouldn’t go away.
Now, wide awake and back at his computer, he still had no answers. As he began poring over weather data for the day, he could see that the storms were likely to be as bad as or worse than Sunday’s. The projection maps suggested the worst weather would be to the south of Oklahoma City—which would be a relief, if true, since that was mostly open farmland. But lookin
g at the current radar, England noticed that there was a line of moisture positioned right over the city—a hint that trouble might be brewing closer to home.
In his gut he knew there was only one way to tell how bad it would be that day. He stood up and walked to his front door. It was almost 5:00 A.M., and the dark sky was just starting to lighten, with flecks of gold to the east, where the sun would soon rise. As he opened the door, he was hit by a blast of air so salty and warm and moist it felt as though the Gulf of Mexico, hundreds of miles to the south, were at his doorstep. He was instantly reminded of the last time he had felt air so unstable this early in the morning: It was on May 3, 1999.
His heart pounding, he quickly went back to his computer and sent out an e-mail to the entire KWTV staff, putting the station on “priority one”—the highest alert level possible. It was all hands on deck. He warned that it was likely there would be tornadoes that day directly to the west of Oklahoma City, heading right toward the metro area.
Within minutes, it was clear he wasn’t the only one who’d had a sleepless night. Many of his staff, including his roster of storm chasers, replied to his e-mail almost as soon as he’d sent it, asking what their role should be in the coverage that day. But as England began to respond to them and organize their war plan, at the back of his mind that haunting question presented itself again and again: How many people would die that day? And what could he do to save them?