Why Fujita's Downburst Discovery Was Important Beyond Aviation

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USAir 1016's wreckage on the west side of Charlotte-Douglas International Airport
Many times, we have discussed the terrible airline crashes caused by downbursts. Examples, here and here. Several times this summer, there has been significant downburst damage to towns and cities. 

But, Ted Fujita's discovery was important to atmospheric science in other ways. Kathleen and I were cleaning out some files last week and ran across this. 
Notice the sub-headline, Tornado May Have Hit Trailer Park. 

The local emergency management and National Weather Service personnel informally agreed to call the damage a tornado because there wasn't anything else, they thought, to call it. The problem was there was no "hook echo" (this was well before Doppler), the atmosphere over south central Kansas was not conductive to tornadoes, and no one saw a funnel cloud. 

Just five months earlier, Dr. Ted Fujita and his mentor, Dr. Horace Byers, published their landmark paper in Monthly Weather Review hypothesizing the existence of downbursts. The paper was highly controversial from day one. 

Unknown to everyone but Kathleen and Dr. Fujita (who I had called Monday, 3rd), my friend and meteorologist Steve Amburn on Saturday, July 1, took a series of seven photos near Andover, Kansas, of the entire life cycle of a downburst. One of then is below.
The "curl" of raindrops in the center is the downburst. Just before I took photo #7, we were hit by a wind gust of more than 60 mph. I called Ted and asked if he would like to see the photos and he excitedly said yes. By the time the slides were developed, prints made and the shipping completed, it took about two weeks. Ted called me and excitedly told me that we had (along with the radar data Ted acquired earlier in the spring) helped confirm the existence of downbursts. Unfortunately, it would take another seven years before Ted's hypothesis was widely accepted --  ideas that change the consensus in science are often not well received.

Had Ted not made his amazing discovery (hundreds of meteorologists had studied thunderstorms and missed the downburst), the climatological records would be filled with mislabeled storms. 

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