Dr. Tetsuya Theodore (Ted) Fujita (1920-1998) was one of the most famous meteorologists to ever study tornadoes. He was popularly known as the Tornado Man or Mr. Tornado. His depth of knowledge and dedication to the study of tornadoes lead to many significant advances in tornado climatology.
Significant Accomplishments
- Fujita is most famous for his development of a tornado intensity scale known as the Fujita Scale or Fujita-Pearson scale.
- Fujita theorized the existence of microbursts after studying the crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 66 as it attempted to land at New York's JFK International Airport in June 1975. By May 29, 1978, he and his colleagues had gotten the very first microburst image via Doppler radar.
- Fujita also pioneered the study of mesoscale meteorology by concentrating on specific tornado events.
- Fujita introduced the idea of tornado families or multiple vortex tornadoes which are individual weather events within one larger scale storm.
- He helped to develop one of the first tornado sensors similar to the 'Dorothy' apparatus in the movie Twister.
- Fujita is credited with coining the terms 'microburst' and 'downburst' which revolutionized the study of severe thunderstorms. This also contributed to the understanding of airline crashes.
- Dr. Fujita was the director of the University of Chicago Wind Research Laboratory. Fujita also made the first color movie of planet Earth in 1967 using colored satellite pictures taken at 30-minute intervals.
- He also recognized the existence of 'bow echoes' in severe weather events. These bow echoes have been used to predict the formation of tornadoes.
- He was an early pioneer in the use of photogrammetry — the science of making maps and calculations from photographs. This was one key way he discovered microbursts.
- He painstakingly mapped a 70-yr period of tornadoes from 1916–1985.
