How To Track A Tornado

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On September 22, 1968 Newton Weller—a self-taught electronics researcher—released a strange story to the DES MOINES REGISTER and TRIBUNE. It told Iowa readers of his long efforts to develop a reliable tornado detection system, and gave simple instructions for turning any TV set into a tornado detector.

The story could not have broken at a better time. Sunday morning found the newspaper already delivered in Orange City, a town not far from Des Moines By noon ominous dark clouds blotted out the sun and the air became sticky with heat. At five o'clock an Orange City fire truck raced through the streets, its beeper wailing. This was the town's method of giving a tornado alert.

Recalling the tornado detection story in the morning's paper, many Orange City residents hastened to their TV sets.

Following the directions in Weller's article, they turned the sets on, let them warm up and tuned to Channel 13. By using the brightness control knobs, the screens were darkened until they were almost black and the sets were switched from Channel 13 to Channel 2. The TV's were then left alone, as instructed, with no further adjustment of the brightness controls.

Before the eyes of these viewers the screens of their TV sets soon began to glow with a strong white light: the signal of a very close and approaching tornado! Heeding the warning, the Orange City residents rushed for places of safety and—minutes later—the tornado struck the town. Damage was later assessed at over one million dollars but, fortunately, no deaths resulted. Here was solid proof that the Weller Method of TV Tornado, Detection worked!

Any functioning TV set will pick up electrical disturbance from a twister as far as 20 miles distant and Weller's research has shown that Channel 2, the lowest of all TV frequencies at 55-megacycles, is the most sensitive to a tornado's electrical discharge. As a twister approaches a TV set tuned to that channel, the storm will produce a steady white light on the receiver's previously-darkened screen.