Fujita symposium on severe storms to be held Jan. 10 and 11

The American Meteorological Society will hold a symposium to honor the late T. Theodore Fujita, the University of Chicago scientist behind the internationally accepted F-scale for measuring tornado severity, Jan. 10 and 11 in Long Beach, Calif.

Fujita, who died in November 1998 at the age of 78, also was known for the discovery of microbursts, small downdrafts that induce ground-level winds of 150 miles an hour, as the cause of the fatal crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 66 at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport in 1975. This important work helped to prevent microburst accidents that previously had killed more than 500 airline passengers at major U.S. airports.

The Symposium on the Mystery of Severe Storms: A Tribute to the Work of T. Theodore Fujita, will be part of the society’s 80th annual meeting Jan. 9 through 14. Attending the symposium will be Fujita’s widow, Sumiko, and his son, Kazuya, a geologist at Michigan State University.

The society had not originally planned to bestow the honor posthumously, said Roger Wakimoto, professor and chairman of the atmospheric sciences department at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“The American Meteorological Society, in all its history, has never held a symposium named after somebody while that person was still living, ” Wakimoto said. “Fujita was going to be the first. We didn’t do it quickly enough, unfortunately. ”

The symposium organizers are Wakimoto and Gregory Forbes, a severe-weather expert at The Weather Channel. Both men completed their Ph.D. work under Fujita at the University of Chicago.

Monday’s session will include presentations on such topics as damage surveys and F-scale assessments; cloud tracking with satellite imagery; and microbursts, downbursts and aviation safety. Tuesday’s session largely will be devoted to the May 3, 1999, tornado outbreak in Oklahoma and Kansas.

Fujita pioneered the field of mesometeorology, the study of middle-sized atmospheric phenomena such as hurricanes and tornadoes, in the 1950s. By the end of his career, he had received nearly $12 million in grants from agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research.

After devising the six-point Fujita Tornado Scale in 1971, he became known as “Mr. Tornado. ” Fujita’s F-scale ranges from F0, winds of 40 to 72 miles an hour and minor damage, to F5, winds of 261 to 319 miles an hour and massive destruction.

Fujita began working as a Research Associate in the University’s Meteorology Department in 1953. The University named him the Charles Merriam Distinguished Service Professor in 1989. He retired from teaching in 1990 at the age of 70 but continued to conduct research until his death.

• Program for the Fujita symposium
• High-resolution images of Fujita, including one with his tornado simulator