For my first professional journalism job out of college, I landed the news editor role at my hometown newspaper, the Times-Republican in Marshalltown, Iowa. On my ninth day, as I turned onto Main Street, I could see the soft morning sun shining on the courthouse’s spire above the trees.
It was Thursday, July 19, 2018. If I had known what would come that afternoon, I might have parked my car at the top of the hill that overlooks the town to capture one last mental photograph.
That day, my publisher Abigail Pelzer would twice summon colleagues to the basement as the tornado sirens wailed outside.
At home on the southwest side of Marshalltown, my dad switched back and forth between weather updates on Des Moines TV stations. Funnel clouds spun in the atmosphere all across Central Iowa and, by our second trip to the newspaper’s basement, a couple had already touched down.
My dad stopped channel flipping to watch KCCI’s chief meteorologist Kurtis Gertz, who our family watched each night when I was growing up. At 4:33 p.m. my dad texted to relay what Gertz had just informed viewers: “Tornado on ground by Albion heading our way.”
Albion is less than 10 miles northwest of Marshalltown.
Just a few minutes later, I heard debris whipping against the newspaper building. A tornado was not just headed our way, it was right on top of us. One moment I was ecstatic about my new career, and the next I wondered if the last moments of my life would be spent with co-workers I’d known only nine days.
At 4:39 p.m., I texted both my parents. “Love you. It’s really bad here.”
Then cell reception dropped and the power flickered off.
***
Just before 5 p.m., as I walked out of the newspaper building moments after the storm passed, the devastation was evident — trees snapped in half, cars smashed into undrivable heaps and the cupola torn off of the historic courthouse. Blocks away, houses lay demolished and two of the city’s most prominent employers faced extraordinary damage with parts of their facilities collapsed and their semi trailers knocked onto their sides.
Thanks to our publisher’s leadership and the staff’s determination despite our own misfortunes, with no power, and limited cellphone and internet service, we worked through the night to put out a newspaper for July 20.
Days later, after the National Weather Service assessment, we learned the winds topped an estimated 144 mph, an EF3 tornado.
A tarp covers the top of the tornado damaged Marshall County Courthouse, Friday, July 20, 2018, in Marshalltown, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Until I asked recently, I had no idea how terrifying it must have been for my dad to find out through the TV coverage that I’d been in the tornado’s direct path. With my mom still at work across town, my dad had driven into town to see if I was OK. He drove until he met blockades he couldn’t pass, and a couple hours passed before a limited amount of cell service allowed me to tell him I was alive.
Anyone who experienced the storm that day wonders how no one died. Many, like me, thank a higher power. But there is also something to be said for the meteorologists who kept viewers informed that afternoon. I often wondered what that day must’ve been like for weather forecasters like Gertz, who had covered countless storms. Was that day — July 19, 2018 — memorable to him, too, or was it just another day of doing his job?
This summer, as the storm’s six-year anniversary approached, I asked him. At his kitchen table, as he sipped a glass of vegetable juice, I told him I wanted to know anything he remembered, acknowledging that it might not be a lot given that it was now years later and he had covered many storms.
But he needed no such acknowledgment. He remembered every last hook echo, pixel on his Doppler radar and National Weather Service alert that came that day.
***
July 19, 2018
Des Moines, Iowa
Gertz arrived at the news station in downtown Des Moines at noon, a couple hours earlier than usual, already sporting a black suit and red tie with diagonal white stripes. He often changed into his suit after he prepared the 10-day forecast for the three evening shows, but on severe weather days like today, he came ready.
Both instinct — the towering clouds he’d seen outside his home in the morning — and his radar data indicated the day’s atmosphere might be ripe for tornadic activity. The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center’s 2% tornado contour probability issued that morning seemed to show his prediction might be overstated, though 2% is still a percentage forecasters watch given the rarity of tornadoes.
TV meteorologists work in tandem with the weather service but operate on their own islands, and that means they have to feel confident in forecasting the weather with their own intellect.
Gertz first grew fascinated with the weather while working in construction in his home state of Wisconsin. He attended Florida State University, fleeing the frigid northern winters, to study the science behind the weather.
Gertz, who was 57 during the 2018 storm, had a TV personality that could be described as that of a goofy dad, never taking things seriously — until he needed to. He believed that if his tone turned stern during inclement weather, viewers might notice his change in demeanor and take his advice seriously.
Everything he came to know about tornadoes he learned from firsthand experience, like a major tornado outbreak in Iowa during his first stint at KCCI in the 1990s; or like in 1999 during a stint with a station in Utah, one of the least tornadic states, when he forecasted an F2 tornado in Salt Lake City that barreled through a nearly four-mile path.
A 2001 tornado in Agency, Iowa, a town of 622, killed two people while they volunteered at the local food pantry. Afterward, Gertz couldn’t stop thinking about how there had been a debate that day at the station about how long the weather team should’ve stayed on the air. Even though it was impossible to control the impact of a storm or whether those in its path took safety precautions, Gertz took each fatality as personally as would a surgeon who can’t save the patient on their table.
Over his nearly four decades of weather forecasting, the technology had grown increasingly better at providing key data, but Gertz learned that the language he used was just as, if not more, important.
“What do I do to save lives? 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 could give a rat’s patootie. I want to save lives. How do I do that?”
By 3 p.m. on July 19, Gertz used a light system he helped implement at the station to inform staff that severe weather coverage was imminent — the red flashes alerted production and the newsroom, bringing the anchors to their desks. He took over the air with severe weather updates.
Gertz was the only meteorologist live from the studio. He sent others across Central Iowa in the hopes of providing viewers with live updates. Those in the field could give him a chance to catch up with the radar without having to talk on the air simultaneously. But more importantly, he knew brightly colored graphics would never have the same psychological impact on viewers as actual storm footage, which could influence them to take shelter.
Screenshots of KCCI’s coverage of the storm on July 19, 2018. (Courtesy)
Near the start of his coverage, one tiny red pixel indicating possible tornadic activity appeared over Bondurant, a rural Des Moines suburb. It looked like nothing. But a few minutes later, Gertz gave the go-ahead to the anchors to show a reporter’s live feed from the town where first responders were on-scene near a house with its roof torn off.
The damage in the videos and photos looks a lot stronger than the one tiny red pixel indicated on my radar, Gertz thought. That means any towns to the east, like Pella, Newton or Marshalltown, are now more favorable for tornadoes.
By 3:45 p.m., there had already been 14 funnels and tornadoes indicated on radar. As more of them kept spinning, Gertz had to decide how much air time to devote to each. In all this, he juggled updates from the National Weather Service, producers talking in his earpiece, and the camera crew and anchors waving to him like mad when they had an update to share.
“After you do it a long time, you know how to prepare and then once the chaos starts, you actually can thrive in the chaos because you’ve been in it so many times,” he told me. “I find myself less hyper. I think if you had a heart rate monitor around me, I would think my heart rate goes down, not up, because I’d become very calm. … I’ve learned that that’s what you need to be to operate in that environment.”
At 4:23 p.m., still live, Gertz zoomed his graphic in on Marshalltown — a line of green showing to the north and a deep red system looming to the south. “Six miles north of Marshalltown,” Gertz told viewers, “confirmed tornado on the ground.”
Twelve minutes later, the station turned to a live feed from one of the storm chasers following that very tornado.
Then, for the first time in his career, Gertz received an alert from the National Weather Service for a tornado emergency. The local offices can only issue such a declaration when a dangerous tornadic system, indicated by both radar and storm spotters, is heading directly toward a population center.
Gertz had seen many monstrous storms, but most had not been darting toward a city the size of Marshalltown, with 27,000-plus residents.
He couldn’t help but think about Marshalltown’s historic structures downtown and the older homes densely packed together on the city’s north side. He believed the tornado could be an EF2 to EF4 based on the 138-mph winds indicated on his radar.
Rarely did he let his emotions break through the peaceful attitude he’d built in his head, but he couldn’t help but get a little choked up.
This, he thought, is not going to be good.
Indeed, it wasn’t good — and viewers, like my dad, learned as much as the station aired a storm chaser’s live video while he rolled into town on Main Street, the same route I’d taken to work that morning.
Later, when the adrenaline of hours of live coverage had worn off, Gertz found solace in a feeling that he’d made the right decisions to protect the people of Marshalltown. He’d shown them not only radar data, but imagery of real tornadoes and stark damage in other communities before the EF3 formed.
Meteorologists don’t usually speculate about what might’ve been after a storm’s finale, but about this tornado, one of the most memorable in his career, Gertz told me: “If Marshalltown is the first tornado of the day I think you have fatalities.”
Thanks to plenty of warning, including from him, somehow very few were injured and no one died.
***
Kurtis Gertz poses with severe weather equipment used at KCCI’s station. (Courtesy)
Gertz retired in 2021 — but not before another unforgettable storm: An August 2020 derecho produced straight-line winds across most of the state of Iowa, later dubbed the costliest thunderstorm in U.S. history.
These days, Gertz seems to have come full circle. He spends his time working part-time for his son’s concrete business — back in the trades, where he first got interested in meteorology. Among other duties, before the concrete pours, he forecasts the weather.
He also loves to see a good movie on “Bargain Day” Tuesdays when a local theater offers discounted admission and a free bag of popcorn. The first few times he went, he looked around at all the people filling the seats in the middle of a weekday afternoon and thought, “Wow, these people don’t have anything else to do.” And then it occurred to him — he’s one of them now.
I asked if he’d be going to see the new “Twisters” movie, the anticipated sequel to the 1996 blockbuster “Twister” that was largely filmed in Iowa. Of course, he told me. Coincidentally, it comes out on a day neither of us will forget: July 19.
Top image: Fallen bricks pile among debris on Main Street in Marshalltown, Iowa, on July 19, 2018, moments after an EF3 tornado swept through, taking off the cupola of the county courthouse and destroying many structures. (Courtesy: Emily Barske Wood)
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