People: Ground truth

His continued interest provided the catalyst for the formation of a volunteer pilot group for the National Weather Service in Springfield, Missouri, called VADS (volunteer aerial damage surveillance).

After Ingram’s father, Gene, purchased the Carthage Airport FBO and moved his family to southwest Missouri in 1962, the younger Ingram took on new responsibilities. Not only did he help run the FBO, but he often played the filmstrip ground lessons for aviation students at the FAR Part 141 flight school his father operated.

“The weather courses intrigued me from the beginning and were some of my favorite parts of ground instruction,” he said. “Several years ago, I enrolled in a storm-spotting class offered by the National Weather Service in the county where I live in southwest Missouri. If I was home when bad weather moved in, I’d call in my observations of wind, rain, hail, and snow to the area’s main office in Springfield.”

On May 4, 2003, not long after Ingram had purchased his Aviat Husky A1–B (the “Stealth Cub”), a tornado swept through the small neighboring town of Pierce City, destroying the downtown district and killing one resident. When he was able to open his hangar door after a power outage caused by the storm, Ingram took to the skies to assess the damage. The tornado’s path was almost immediately visible.

“I was surprised by what I saw,” Ingram said. “The trail of destruction stood out starkly, like an ugly brown gash cutting through the green terrain.”

At the time, it didn’t occur to him to note the GPS coordinates of the beginning and end points of visible damage, but he did so five years later, when overflying the aftermath of another killer tornado on Mother’s Day in 2008, which originated just south of Chetopa, Kansas. Based on the coordinates, Ingram was startled to discover that the tornado had not only remained on the ground for an incredible 76 miles but had also made an unusual 30-degree turn in its course.

“I immediately called and reported my surprising discovery to the National Weather Service,” he said.

After the infamous Joplin, Missouri, tornado of May 22, 2011—one of the most devastating in history—Ingram phoned in a discovery that was even more startling.

“After the five-mile TFR over Joplin was lifted, I flew over the city to try to locate the GPS coordinates for the beginning and end points of the storm damage,” he said. “I began seeing visible damage from the air a couple of miles southwest of Joplin, just as the NWS had indicated, but as I continued to fly the path of destruction eastward, I knew right away that the tornado had stayed on the ground much farther than the NWS’s reported six miles. After calculating, I determined that, even though it had narrowed considerably from its original one-mile width after leaving the city, the tornado had remained on the ground for 22 statute miles. After I shared the information with the NWS, they changed their report.”

Because of Ingram’s ability to pinpoint the exact mileage of the Joplin tornado from the air, it was obvious to Springfield meteorologists that aerial surveillance of damage could be critical in determining the ground time and intensity of a storm. But the NWS budget couldn’t be stretched to allow for chartering an airplane and hiring a pilot after every storm, so a handful of pilots—including Ingram—volunteered their time, and, in 2014, VADS was officially born.

Pilots affiliated with VADS have their names on file with the NWS office in Springfield and are available by telephone or Email if they are needed to overfly the aftermath of a storm. To facilitate tracking, when confirmation of damage is needed, they are issued maps with the coordinates of the areas possibly affected.

“Radar is a useful tool,” said meteorologist Doug Cramer, “but often ground truth provided by aerial surveillance is necessary in order to correlate radar images with what actually happened. We appreciate Mark Ingram for bringing it to our attention.”

Sheila Harris, a freelance writer, lives in southwest Missouri.