His impact on storm science is incalculable and our world is a little less without his presence.TETSUYA THEODORE FUJITA: METEOROLOGICAL DETECTIVE AND ILLUSTRATOR On 19 November the meteorological community lost one of its great luminaries, Professor T.T. But Jamie and I surveyed several tracks and were fortunate to photograph a now rather famous aerial photo of "suction vortex" cycloidal tracks in farm fields. (As I recall, per diem was only $35 for Chicago. Dr. Fujita was asked to apply his microanalysis techniques to the barograph traces from a case involving a tornado outbreak in Kansas and Oklahoma on June 25, 1953.
We will all remember him as a tireless and, at times, relentless worker who was driven by the desire to make novel discoveries and stimulate other scientists to examine his theories. Many may not have realized that Ted suffered from Diabetes and circulatory complications from it. In a way, this may symbolize that their passing closes a chapter from the "Pioneering Era" of weather science, when knowledge was often acquired by simple human sight and thought, rather than complex computer simulation or reliance upon the sophisticated machines of high-technology that so pervasively surround us nowadays. Fujita, because of so many ideas all within his mind at the same time and because of insufficient time, did not seem to formally publish so much of what he did. Early in 1946, Ted applied for a Department of Education grant under the topic "Weather Science" to instruct teachers about the weather, a topic which fascinated him.
Never one to shy away from controversy, Prof. Fujita had no fear of being proven wrong.
He received financial support from Dr. Otani, to which Ted was indebited. "Memoirs of Effort to Unlock the Mystery of Severe Storms during the 50 Years, 1942-1992," by Fujita, T. Theodore, Wind Research Laboratory Research Paper Number 239, 1994.
However, this one was not filled with rain but driven by the evaporation of rain. He always far "outdistanced" nearly all his nearest competitors. Then, of course, was his work on the "tornado cyclone" (that term was not one of his own, it came from Brooks, 1949), collapse of the echo top during tornadogenesis, the "leaping cirrus" around the overshooting cloud domes of tornadic and other sever storms.
His superb graphics motivated the American Meteorological Society Committee on Severe Storms to initiate a best visual aids prize at their Severe Local Storms Conference in 1975. I recall that I was able to walk on a series of stepping stones marked "good luck" ever since I finished out of postwar Japan to the University of Chicago by Professor Horace R. Byers, my fatherly mentor professor.
Many of the concepts that Col. Miller and Dr. Fujita proposed then have not only withstood the test of scientific scrutiny over time, but survive today within the routine operational forecast models and post-analysis research tools used daily in the modernized NWSFOs of the late 1990s. reports from Ted and his Chicago U. group and his conference and formal publications. He even studied and documented these pains with his revealing illustrations and writings.MILLER AND FUJITA: THE PIONEERS by Randal A. ZipserI was saddened to hear of the recent passing of both Col. Robert C. Miller and Dr. T. Theodore Fujita. The result was Teds incredible map showing all of the tornado tracks.On June 24, 1975, Eastern Airlines flight number 66 crashed at John F. Kennedy Airport during a thunderstorm killing 122 people. BACK TO TORNADOES (1978 through 1982): More detailTed continued surveying tornado damage during the downburst project. A party was held in Teds honor to commemorate the event. WINDS OF MANY KINDS (1983 through 1993): A mixed bagDuring the next ten years, Ted studied the winds of various phemomena including Hurricanes Alicia in 1983, Hugo in 1989, and Andrew in 1992. During my graduate-school days (at the University of Oklahoma) and early days of my meteorology career (at GE/MATSCO in Beltsville, MD), I had the good fortune and pleasure to not only have known both of these men, but also to have worked closely, albeit briefly, with them. I could always immediately recognize them as his.So many think of him as Mr. Tornado. Ted's thesis "Analytical Study of Typhoons" was completed in August 1952 but it took another year for it to be approved. He requested the flight data from other flights around the time of the accident and found that some planes experienced strong crosswinds while otheres experienced strong headwinds or tailwinds.
Fujita was born in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan.
He noticed the tornado tracks paralleled each other in FAMILIES. Then on June 3, 1980 seven tornadoes occurred near Grand Island, Nebraska over a two hour and forty-five minute period. Several of the leading researchers early on, thought he was "all wet" with this idea. Here, perhaps, his formal education in mechanical engineering (B.S., 1943, Meiji College of Technology) paid benefits to the meteorological community, as well as contributing to his accomplishments in rectifying early satellite imagery, in tornado and cloud photogrammetry, and in inventing a mechanical tornado simulator.