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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

scene of tornado destruction

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, March 5, 2012 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Tim Marshall

"Tornado Hazards to Critical Facilities"

ABSTRACT -- We're all familiar with news photos of the destruction caused to homes and shopping centers by hurricanes and tornadoes. Those losses are certainly tragic, but the damage can be even worse when critical facilities like nuclear power plants, air force bases, biohazard facilities, hospitals, and oil refineries are threatened. This talk will focus on how to protect the people and equipment in those and other facilities. The talk will be based on the speaker's experience as a consultant on a number of engineering projects, as well as on his surveys of hurricane and tornado damage and on his years of storm chasing.

SPEAKER -- Tim Marshall is a Professional Engineer and meteorologist working for Haag Engineering. His work with Haag include surveying damage caused by tornadoes and hurricanes. His experience with severe storms began at age 10, when an F4 tornado touched down a few miles from his home.

He has continued to experience close encounters with severe storms, many of which are documented in DVDs available from Storm Track, including Tim Marshall's 25 Years of Storm Chasing.

Perhaps influenced by his early brush with a tornado, he majored in meteorology when he attended Northern Illinois University, obtaining a BS. He followed this with two MS degrees from Texas Tech University, one in Civil Engineering and one in Atmospheric Science.

His other professional activities include membership in the committee that produced the Enhanced Fujita Scale, an updated version of a widely used system for ranking the damage caused by tornadoes. He served as a consultant to the committee managing the Saffir-Simpson scale for rating hurricanes. He served on the Severe Local Storms Committee of the American Meteorological Society and is a member of the NOAA/National Weather Service Quick Response Team.

He is a registered Professional Engineer and was inducted into the Civil Engineering Academy of Texas Tech University, which also awarded him their Civil Engineering Excellence Award.


Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov