"High Instability" for December 12th, 2007
Tim Marshall
Our guest for the December 12th show will be Mr. Tim Marshall. This will be our "Insurance Fiesta" show. Tune in to find out all about what has happened regarding litigation involving the May 3rd, 1999 Oklahoma Tornadoes and Hurricane Katrina's water vs. wind arguments. Below is a brief bio:
Tim Marshall was born in Evergreen Park, IL in 1956 near Chicago, Illinois and raised in Oak Lawn, then in Oak Brook. Oak Lawn was heavily damaged during the historic Belvidere - Oak Lawn Tornado Outbreak of April 21, 1967 when he was 10 years old. The F4 "Oak Lawn tornado" touched down about four miles (6.4 km) west of his family's home and killed 33 in town, including some of his classmates. Already developed an interest in meteorology, this experience only strengthened that, and focused it on tornadoes.
Tim attended Northern Illinois University at DeKalb, attaining a B.S. degree majoring in meteorology in 1978. As an undergraduate student there, he and classmates surveyed some tornado damage paths of the 1974 Super Outbreak during informal travels to the National Climatic Data Center to collect severe weather data.
Marshall went to Texas for graduate school, seeing his first tornado a few hours after entering the state for the first time and he began storm chasing in 1978, meeting his future wife, Kay, at a concert. In 1980, he earned a M.S. in atmospheric sciences from Texas Tech University in Lubbock then went on to earn an M.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the same university. There, Tim worked part time at the Institute for Disaster Research where he began surveying tornado and hurricane damage. His first official tornado damage survey was in Grand Island, NE in 1980 and his first hurricane damage survey was Hurricane Allen in south Texas later that same year.
In 1983, he was hired by the leading Texas firm Haag Engineering. At Haag, Marshall travels a great deal surveying storm damage across the United States. He has conducted more than 100 damage surveys since 1983 of hailstorms, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Some of the famous tornadoes he has surveyed included the F5's at Jarrell, TX (1997), Bridge Creek, OK (1999), and Greensburg, KS (2007). Some of the famous hurricanes he has surveyed include Alicia in TX (1983), Hugo in South Carolina (1989), Andrew in Florida (1992), Elena in Mississippi (1995), and Katrina also in Mississippi (2005). Tim became a professional engineer in 1989.
Tim still finds time to pursue his hobby as a storm chaser. During the past 30 years, Tim has filmed more than 200 tornadoes and experienced 15 hurricanes. In 2004, Tim rode out Hurricane Ivan in Pensacola, FL and in 2005, Tim rode our Hurricane Katrina in Slidell, LA. Tim has appeared on dozens of television programs including those on the Discovery Channel, Learning Channel, National Geographic, and the History Channel. He has been on the Oprah Winfrey show twice.
Tim Marshall was selected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to serve on their Quick Response Team where he has surveyed tornado damage in Alabama and Georgia in 1994, Nashville, TN in 1998, and LaPlata, MD in 2002. Tim was also on the development team of the Fujita Scale Enhancement Project which produced an Enhanced Fujita Scale to update the original Fujita scale of tornado intensity. He also has been a principle trainer in damage surveys for the National Weather Service. In 2006, Tim was elected to serve on the Severe Local Storms committee for the American Meteorological Society.
