Ted Fujita

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Ted Fujita
Roger M. Wakimoto, Gregory S. Forbes

Tetsuya Theodore Fujita (

microbursts
and was an instrumental figure in advancing modern understanding of many severe weather phenomena and how they affect people and communities, especially through his work exploring the relationship between wind speed and damage.

Biography

Fujita was born in the village of Sone,

downdraft. Fujita remained at the University of Chicago until his retirement in 1990.[3][dead link
]

Career

Fujita's track analysis of the 1974 Super Outbreak

Fujita is recognized as the discoverer of downbursts and microbursts and also developed the Fujita scale,[4] which differentiates tornado intensity and links tornado damage with wind speed.

Fujita's best-known contributions were in tornado research; he was often called "Mr. Tornado" by his associates and by the media.

tornado that hit Lubbock, Texas on May 11, 1970. He established the value of photometric analysis of tornado pictures and films to establish wind speeds at various heights at the surface of tornado vortices.[7] Fujita was also the first to widely study the meteorological phenomenon of the downburst, which can pose serious danger to aircraft. As a result of his work, in particular on Project NIMROD, pilot training worldwide routinely uses techniques he pioneered to provide instruction to students.[8]

Fujita was also largely involved in developing the concept of

mini-swirls in intensifying tropical cyclones.[9][10]

Ted Fujita died in his Chicago home on November 19, 1998.[11] The American Meteorological Society (AMS) held the "Symposium on The Mystery of Severe Storms: A Tribute to the Work of T. Theodore Fujita" during its 80th Annual Meeting in January 2000.[12] Storm Track magazine released a special November 1998 issue, "A Tribute To Dr. Ted Fujita"[2] and Weatherwise published "Mr. Tornado: The life and career of Ted Fujita" as an article in its May/June 1999 issue.[13] He was the subject of Mr. Tornado,[14] a documentary film that originally aired on PBS American Experience on May 19, 2020.[15]

World War II

Fujita was residing in

firebombed the day before. As a result, the bomb was dropped on the secondary target, Nagasaki.[16] Studying the damage caused by the nuclear explosions contributed to Fujita's understanding of downbursts and microbursts as "starbursts" of wind hitting the Earth's surface and spreading out.[17]

References

  1. doi:10.1175/1520-0477-82.1.fmi
    .
  2. ^ a b Marshall, Tim; et al. (1998). "A Tribute to Dr. Ted Fujita". Storm Track. 22 (1).
  3. ^ "Tetsuya "Ted" Fujita, 1920–1998". University of Chicago News Office. Retrieved September 4, 2019.
  4. hdl:10605/261875
    .
  5. ^ "Tornado researcher Ted Fujita died in 1998". Weather. USA Today. Chicago: Gannett. Associated Press. March 16, 2005. Archived from the original on September 12, 2005. Retrieved June 17, 2021. Fujita, known as "Mr. Tornado" after developing the international standard for measuring tornado severity, died Thursday after a lengthy illness.
  6. ^ "NWS Lubbock, TX Local Weather Events: The 1970 Lubbock Tornado". weather.gov/lub. Lubbock, Texas. National Weather Service. Archived from the original on May 11, 2021. Retrieved May 17, 2021. The tornado killed 26 people and injured more than 1500 along its 8.5 mile track, while covering about 15 square miles of Lubbock. Dr. Theodore "Ted" Fujita later determined that all but one of the deaths (96%) occurred along the path of suction spots (also known as suction swaths and suction marks). These suction spots, which create localized areas of increased damage, are created when smaller-scale vortices develop and rotate around the larger parent tornado forming a multiple-vortex tornado.
  7. ISSN 0003-0007
    .
  8. ISSN 0003-0007
    .
  9. ISSN 1068-624X. Retrieved 15 June 2021 – via Newspaper.com
    . Fujita found winds within winds within winds. Mini-swirls and microburts and swatchs danced madly within the powerful eye wall, smashing some neighborhoods, then skating away, leaving other subdivisions with comparatively little damage.
  10. ^ "Wind expert says Andrew generated small superwinds". United Press International. Tampa, Florida. 20 May 1993. Retrieved 15 June 2021. Ted Fujita, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, spoke Wednesday at the Seventh Annual Governor's Hurricane Conference in Tampa. Fujita said the newly discovered superwinds probably accounted for only a small portion of the 35,000 homes that were destroyed by the hurricane in south Dade County Aug. 24. The storm caused $16.5 billion in insured losses in the county.
  11. ISSN 0190-8286
    . Retrieved September 25, 2021.
  12. ^ Symposium on The Mystery of Severe Storms: A Tribute to the Work of T. Theodore Fujita. Long Beach, CA. 2000.
  13. ISSN 0043-1672
    .
  14. ^ "Mr. Tornado | American Experience | PBS". www.pbs.org. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  15. ASIN B0851LK9FR
    . Retrieved 15 June 2021.
  16. OCLC 793581455. Retrieved June 15, 2021 – via Google Books
    .
  17. ^ "Tetsuya "Ted" Fujita, 1920–1998". www-news.uchicago.edu. Retrieved July 17, 2021.

Sources

Further reading

Memoirs

External links
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