This is a picture of the Ozark Christian College campus in the grips of the Blizzard of 2011, sent along by Alumni Director Meredith Williams. Ah, the memories...Ok, so I gotta give a bit of a background here. Lee George was a long time weather anchor on KODE-TV in Joplin. I knew Lee, of course. He was a good guy, and served many years faithfully. One year, though, he missed the forecast by just a bit. He forecast flurries. What Joplin got was one of the biggest recorded snowfalls since they started keeping records. I know for a fact that police patrolled his house because of all the death threats. He never lived that down. He's been dead for many years now. He still hasn't lived it down!
I think it was Thanksgiving Week 1992. I was the weekend weather anchor on KSN-TV in Joplin (my old partner in crime, Ken Ford, was the week day anchor) and I was in the final year of my tenure as a student at Ozark Christian College. It was Tuesday. It was chapel day. Two unsavory characters approached me; they were professors there at OCC and they were worried men. You see, a monster winter storm had us in the cross hairs and was going to hit like tomorrow. That being the case, a lot of the students would get stranded here, they wouldn't make it home or those who tried would run an incredible risk of death and injury and they'd have to keep the dorms open and the caf open, etc etc you get the picture. They asked me to go to OCC President Ken Idleman and make the case that we should close early and get the kids outa here.
So as we walked from his office to chapel, I gave Ken a complete weather briefing. As chapel progressed he and the faculty had an impromptu caucus the end result being for the first time in its history OCC dismissed early and the kids evacuated the place.
It snowed not one flake. Nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. As I arrived in the early morning to do my morning thing at KOBC-FM there at the campus, I looked into the sullen morning sky.
"Snow!" I bellowed to the heavens. Then I heard it. Yes, I heard it. As surely as I'm here today I heard the ghost of Lee George laughing at me from the grave!
In the interests of full disclosure, the storm went all around us and the students were hammered as they went home and, yes, it was a good thing they got a day's head start. But here on campus, there was awful nothingness!
So here we are in the grips of the Blizzard of 2011. What memories may come?
Yes, those of us who did weather in the 4 states weren't indoctrinated until we heard the story of Lee George (many times) from the viewers. Of course, I have my Lee George moment too. One Sunday night, I see a cold front moving down from the NW and a warm air flow pushing moisture up from the gulf. The NWS (National Weather Service) says clear and sunny for the rest of the week. I had only been doing weather for 3 weeks so who was I to question the NWS. So I went with their forecast. Yep, it rained the entire week!
ReplyDeleteSteve Tommey
I wasn't a Meteorologist, bit a newly hired control room engineer at KODE-TV in August 1977. Lee George heard that my hometown was Buffalo, NY. Late that January in 1977, Buffalo and,Western NY received a huge storm, called the Blizzard of '77.
ReplyDeleteLee kept reminding me, in subtle ways, on the air no less, "that there's snow-w-w... in Buffalo." He knew I was listening, as I was sitting on the master control board. Lee never liked what another had, a color radar display (before the later development of doppler radar). He preferred the old Army-Navy unit on the rooftop of Channel 12, as he said, he could see in greater detail of any swirls in the cloud pattern.