TR file photo
As my first professional journalism job out of college, I worked as a news editor at the Republic Times in my hometown of Marshalltown. On the ninth day, as I turned onto Main Street, I could see the soft morning sun shining on the spire of the courthouse above the trees.
That was Thursday, July 19, 2018.
Twice that day, my publisher, Abigail Pelzer, summoned her colleagues to the basement because tornado sirens were blaring outside.
At home on the southwest side of Marshalltown, my father flipped back and forth between weather reports on Des Moines television stations. Funnel clouds swirled in the atmosphere over central Iowa, and by the time we made our second trip to the newspaper's basement, a couple had landed.
My dad stopped channel switching and switched to KCCI Chief Meteorologist Kurtis Gertz's show, which our family watched every night when I was growing up. At 4:33 p.m., my dad texted and relayed what Gertz had just told the audience: “A tornado on the ground in Albion is headed our way.”
Albion is located less than 10 miles northwest of Marshalltown.
Minutes later, I heard debris hitting the newspaper building. Not only was the tornado heading towards us, it was right over our heads. One moment I'm ecstatic about my new career, the next I'm wondering if I'll be spending the last moments of my life with colleagues I've only known for nine days.
At 4:39 pm, I sent a text message to my parents. “Love you. It's really bad here.
Then the cell phone signal dropped and the power went out.
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When I walked out of the newspaper building just before 5 p.m., shortly after the storm passed, the damage was evident: trees snapped in half, cars smashed into unmoveable piles, the dome of the historic courthouse torn off. Blocks away, homes were demolished and two of the city's most prominent employers faced huge losses, with parts of their facilities collapsed and semi-trailers flipped on their sides.
Thanks to the determination of the publishing house’s leadership and staff, despite our own misfortune, no electricity, and limited cell phone and internet service, we worked through the night to launch the July 20th newspaper.
A few days later, after a National Weather Service assessment, we learned that the wind speed was estimated to be 144 mph, making it an EF3 tornado.
Until I asked recently, I had no idea how scary it must have been to find out through the TV coverage that my dad had been in the direct path of a tornado. Since my mom still worked in the city, my dad drove into town to see if I was okay. He drove until he hit an impassable blockade, and hours passed with limited cell service for me to tell him I was still alive.
Anyone who lived through the storm that day will wonder why no one died. Many, like me, give thanks to a higher power. But the meteorologist who briefed viewers that afternoon also had something to say. I often wonder what that day would have been like for weather forecasters like Goetz, who have covered countless storms. Is July 19, 2018, a day worth remembering for him too, or is it just another day at work for him?
This summer, as the sixth anniversary of the storm approached, I asked him. At his kitchen table, while he sipped a glass of vegetable juice, I told him I wanted to know anything he remembered, but admittedly, considering it was several years later and he had been through a lot Storm, so probably not too much.
But he didn't need that admission. He remembers every hook echo, pixel on Doppler radar and National Weather Service alert that went out that day.
Gertz arrived at the news station in downtown Des Moines at noon, several hours earlier than usual, already wearing a black suit and red tie with a white diagonal stripe. He often changes into a suit after preparing for the ten-day weather forecast for three evening shows, but in inclement weather like today, he's prepared.
Both instincts — the towering clouds he saw outside his home in the morning — and his radar data suggested the atmosphere might be ripe for tornado activity that day. The 2 percent chance of a tornado outline issued by the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center that morning seemed to indicate that his prediction may have been exaggerated, although 2 percent was still a percentage that forecasters focused on, given the rarity of tornadoes.
TV meteorologists work with weather services but work on their own islands, which means they must be confident in using their own intelligence to predict the weather.
Gertz first became fascinated with weather while working construction in his native Wisconsin. To escape the cold northern winters, he enrolled at Florida State University to study the science behind weather.
During the storm of 2018, Gertz, 57, was a TV personality who could be described as a goofball dad who never took things seriously — unless he needed to. He believed that if his tone became stern during bad weather, viewers might notice a change in his behavior and take his advice seriously.
What he knows about tornadoes is learned from first-hand experience, like when Iowa had a major tornado outbreak in the 1990s during his first tenure at KCCI; or like in 1999, when there were the fewest tornadoes While stationed in Utah, one of the states, he predicted an F2 tornado in Salt Lake City with a nearly four-mile path.
In 2001, a tornado killed two people while volunteering at a local food pantry in Agent, Iowa, a town of 622 people. Later, Goetz kept thinking about the debate that had taken place at the station that day about how long the meteorological team should stay in the air. While it's impossible to control the storm's impact or whether people in its path took safety precautions, Goetz took each death as personally, like a surgeon unable to save a patient on the operating table .
Over his nearly four decades of weather forecasting, the technology has gotten better and better at providing critical data, but Goetz realized that the language he used was just as important, if not more important.
“What do I do to save a life? How do I do that?” he told me. “It's that simple.” … I don’t care how I sound, I don’t care if I’m repeating myself. I really don't care if I win an Emmy for this – I can give away a rat potato. I want to save lives. What do I do?
At 3 p.m. on July 19, Gertz used a lighting system he helped implement at the station to notify staff of approaching severe weather — a red flash alerting production crews and newsrooms, bringing anchors to their desks. He took over with an update on severe weather conditions.
Gertz was the only live meteorologist in the studio. He sent others across central Iowa in hopes of providing viewers with immediate updates. Having someone on the scene gives him a chance to catch up with the radar without having to talk on the air at the same time. But more importantly, he knew brightly colored graphics would never have the same psychological impact on viewers as footage of actual storms, which might influence them to seek shelter.
As his report was about to begin, a tiny red pixel appeared over the Des Moines suburb of Bondurant, indicating possible tornadic activity. It doesn't look like much. But minutes later, Goetz gave the anchor permission to broadcast a live broadcast from a reporter in town, where first responders were at the scene and a nearby house had its roof ripped off.
The damage in the film and photos looked much more severe than a tiny red pixel showing up on my radar, Goetz thought. That means any town in the east, like Pella, Newton or Marshalltown, is now more susceptible to tornadoes.
By 3:45 p.m., 14 funnels and tornadoes were showing on radar. As more and more people continue to spin, Goetz must decide how much air time to devote to each one. Amidst it all, he's juggling updates from the National Weather Service, producers talking into headsets, and camera crews and anchors waving to him frantically when they have an update to share.
“When you've been doing it for a long time, you know how to prepare, and then once the chaos starts, you can actually thrive in the chaos because you've been there so many times,” he told me. “I found myself less hyper. I think if I had a heart rate monitor next to me, I would think my heart rate would be going down, not going up, because I would be so calm. … I learned that this is what happens when required to operate in that environment.
At 4:23 p.m., Goetz zoomed in on an image of Marshalltown — a green line appeared to the north and a crimson system loomed south. “Six miles north of Marshalltown,” Gertz told the audience, “there is a confirmed tornado on the ground.”
Twelve minutes later, the station switched to a live broadcast from a storm chaser tracking the tornado.
Then, for the first time in his career, Gertz received a warning from the National Weather Service about a tornado emergency. Local offices can issue such statements only if radar and storm spotters indicate a dangerous tornado system moving directly toward population centers.
Gertz has seen many terrible storms, but most of them never hit a city the size of Marshalltown, with more than 27,000 residents.
He couldn't help but think of the historic buildings in downtown Marshalltown and the dense cluster of old homes on the city's north side. Based on the 138 mph winds shown on the radar, he believed the tornado was likely an EF2 to EF4.
He rarely allowed his emotions to break the calm attitude he had established in his mind, but he couldn't help but choke up a little.
This couldn't be a good thing, he thought.
In fact, it wasn't great – viewers, like my dad, learned a lot from the live video the station showed of a storm chaser as he drove down Main Street into town, which was where I was going to work that morning. The route to take.
Later, when the adrenaline from hours of live reporting wore off, Gertz took comfort in the fact that he made the right decision to protect the people of Marshalltown. He showed them not only radar data but also images of real tornadoes and other severe damage to communities before EF3 formed.
Meteorologists don't usually speculate on what will happen after a storm ends, but of this tornado, one of the most memorable of his career, Goetz told me: “If Marshalltown was the first tornado of the day, I think You will cause casualties”.
Thanks to plenty of warning, including from him, somehow few people were injured and no one died.
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Gertz retired in 2021, but not before one more memorable storm: an August 2020 derecho that produced straight-line winds across much of Iowa and became known as the U.S. The costliest thunderstorm in history.
These days, Goetz seems to be back to square one. He spent his time working part-time for his son's concrete business – returning to industry where he first became interested in meteorology. Among other duties, he predicted the weather before the concrete was poured.
He also likes to see a good movie on Tuesday “Special Days,” when local theaters offer discounted tickets and a free bag of popcorn. The first few times he went there, he looked around, sitting in his seat in the middle of the weekday afternoon, and thought, “Wow, these people have nothing else to do.” And then it suddenly occurred to him–he was now one of them. One member.
I asked him if he would go see the new movie “Twister,” the sequel to the 1996 blockbuster “Twister,” which was shot largely in Iowa. Of course, he told me. Coincidentally, it was released on a day none of us will forget: July 19th.
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Emily Barske Wood is a native of Marshalltown, MHS
Graduate, worked as TR editor.
This article was originally published by Poynter.
