When tornadoes broke out on a historic afternoon in 1999 in and around Oklahoma City, Carthage’s Dwayne Beaver was there.
Well, he wasn’t physically there, but thanks to the wide and sophisticated array of computer gadgetry at his disposal, he was able to swiftly navigate over to a weather camera bolted to a metal tower in south Oklahoma City. After a few seconds of buffering, the scene on his computer screen went live.
There, before him, was the swirling mass of an F-4 tornado.
“I jumped back,” he said, chuckling, mimicking the startled, shouting sound he had made that day. “I’d never seen anything like it. The funnel was right there in front of me. I spoke a lot of French right then.”
More recently, a tornado warning from the National Weather Service was issued for the Colorado Springs area. Again — pounding keys while swirling around his mouse — he confidently navigated his way onto live weather cam feed from the roof of a bank just south of Colorado Springs. And there, on the side of the famed Pike’s Peak itself, swirled an F-2 tornado.
“I wanted to capture a picture of that one,” Beaver said, but couldn’t. Some “experts” say tornadoes can’t jump over natural land barriers such as mountains or rivers. Wrong, Beaver said. “What I saw on that camera proved them” wrong.
“I guess you can almost call me ‘radar O’Reilly’ almost, really.”
Beaver isn’t a storm chaser, that hazardous occupation that’s become all the rage on cable television.
No, What Beaver does is much more important for the folks living here in Carthage and the Southwest Missouri region. As a member of Mokan SKYWARN, Beaver is one of the first men to spot and warn of approaching storms, relaying important information over a repeater, which is then retransmitted on the Web. He also passes on weather-related information using his ham radio, his voice one of the most recognized and popular in the four-state region.
The SKYWANR group is comprised of many local amateurs that constantly “look to the skies” for potential danger from Mother Nature. Where severe storms are possible, storm spotting groups such as SKYWARN in the United States coordinate amateur radio operators to keep track of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. Reports from spotters and chasers are given to the National Weather Service so that they have the information to warn the general public. Spotters also give reports during winter storms, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires.
“This stuff keeps me busy,” he said. “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t do this.”
Beaver was 6-years-old Kansas City resident when a dangerous F-4 tornado rumbled through the countywide near his suburb. Though it was too dark to see anything, he would always remember the multiple wailings of the storm sirens from the various Kansas City suburb cities surrounding him, each wailing and echoing back on the other in a seemingly endless loop.
“It was very eerie. I couldn’t see the tornado but I knew it was out there. That’s what got me going when I was young.
“I wasn’t scared of it,” he added. If anything, he was curious to see what the hubbub was all about.
He’d get his wish.
Nowadays, it’s probably safe to say he’s one of the top five most informed weather experts living in Jasper County.
Like emergency personnel and the meteorologists working from the local Joplin stations, he knows far in advance about a nasty storm — or conditions that could spawn said nasty storm — at least a week before it could ever pose a viable threat to Carthage.
“We usually know of (something) seven to 10 days out. By then it’s all in the background, we’re quietly preparing, you know, while everyone else is going about their business here in town. We don’t want to give them unduly alarm or they all might fall apart.”
Web briefings updating the situation will continue on a daily basis, as D-day approaches, becoming more frequent until they are almost hourly.
“Sometimes (the storms) hit, and sometimes they don’t. Many times they don’t,” Beaver said.
It’s something about the lay of the land just west of Joplin or a band of temperatures — who knows? But it seems to deflect major storms cells thundering down atop western Jasper County north toward Golden City or south into Newton County and Northwest Arkansas.
“I’ve seen storms come out of Oklahoma like a bull coming right at you with steam coming out of its nose and it hits the border and just blows out steam… get sucked dry,” Beaver said. “I’ve seen a super cell from Dodge City, Kan. and a super cell coming down from Kansas City and they’ll collide right above Joplin… but when they near us, they just went in opposite directions, don’t know if it’s water or topography or what, but it happens quite a lot.”
But not always, sadly — Beaver recalls the “Mother’s Day” tornado that killed 22 people, and just missed Neosho, crossing I-44 as it rumbled east. That was the deadliest storm Beaver can recall in his 30-plus spent with storms. The largest, scariest storm he can recall happened back in 2003, when multiple twisters tore up parts of Carl Junction, Pierce City and Stockton.
From his command post inside his home, 623 E. Third Street, Beaver is just a few keyboard clicks away from finding and even eyeballing, via weather cameras, any storm hammering any part of the continental United States. And people know it. They often call him when they’re on the road, asking if a line of bruised clouds up ahead could be dangerous.
He told one story about a buddy of his driving south into Houston, Texas, and seeing some ugly clouds up ahead and contacting him, asking if the dark brew in the sky was dangerous. It was — about that time, he received tornado warnings for that area.
“Start dragging your feet or applying the brakes,” Beaver told his friend over the radio, “they’ve got tornado warnings on either side of Houston.”
Inside his “cockpit” — four monitors in front of him, ham radio to his left, coffee mug on his right — he keeps an eye out on the skies. In fact, a camera on his roof can see the tops of storm clouds as far south as Fayetteville, Ark.
“If there’s bad weather or a tornado… I can probably find it.”
About the only thing that frightens Beaver is some local people’s confidence that Carthage hasn’t or will never be hit by a tornado. Some of it is wishful thinking, of course, but many believe in that invisible barrier of sorts that hovers west of Joplin, protecting it and the towns immediately beyond it. In fact, there’s an old storm adage here in Southwest Missouri that “if you live north of I-44, you’re safe from bad storms.”
They couldn’t be more wrong, Beaver says with a sad shake of his head.
“I’ve had people say nothing will ever hit Carthage, but I’ve looked it up, the history, and there was an F4 tornado that came within seven miles of Carthage back in the 1950s. That’s what has always bothered me, what makes me to sick to hear, that everybody thinks nothing will ever hit us.”
In the end, he continued, the odds are just too great against Carthage and the surrounding area.
“You just never say never,” he said. “There’s going to be a time where it’s going to hit us.”
