Saturday, June 15, 2019

In case you missed it: Crane crumbles amid severe weather in Dallas, killing 1; Fired TV meteorologist sparks change

By Mark Puleo, AccuWeather staff writer




Heavy winds may have played a role in a crane falling and slicing through an apartment building in Dallas, Texas. The region was under a severe thunderstorm warning when the crane crumbled, and numerous locations in Dallas reported wind gusts of over 70 mph.
Multiple residents of the apartment building were treated for injuries and one citizen, Kiersten Symone Smith, was killed. Smith wasn't the only Texan whose death had a connection to the week's severe weather. On Monday afternoon, officials blamed those same intense winds for the fatality of a woman who drowned when her sailboat capsized.
construction crane dallas
This photo taken and provided by Michael Santana shows a construction crane laying on an apartment building after it was buffeted by high winds during a storm in Dallas, Texas, Sunday, June 9, 2019. (Michael Santana via AP)

The intense storms left about 140,000 residents temporarily without power, according to poweroutage.us. The weather had been so severe that flights were grounded at Dallas-Forth Worth Airport. However, the company that owns the crane says the machinery was designed to withstand winds up to 95 mph.
On Monday, a helicopter crashed onto the top of a skycraper in midtown Manhattan, killing the pilot, later identified as 58-year-old Timothy McCormick.
While an investigation is still underway, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Tuesday that McCormick lacked the proper license to operate an aircraft under inclement weather conditions.
Rain and heavy clouds were present at the time when the helicopter hit AXA Equitable building. AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said the cloud base was between 400 and 700 feet. The AXA Equitable Building, where the crash took place, reaches a height of 752 feet.
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Mist and smoke cover the top of a building near 51st Street and 7th Avenue Monday, June 10, 2019, in New York, where a helicopter was reported to have crash landed on top of the roof of a building in midtown Manhattan.

Across the pond, severe weather upset people for very different reasons. In the United Kingdom, where the Cricket World Cup is taking place, fans from around the world have been left disappointed by the soaking weather that has caused match delays and schedule issues.
On Wednesday, tornado reports surfaced while heavy rains delayed over 400 flights earlier in the week. Those heavy rains forced the World Cup match between Bangladesh and Sri Lanka on Tuesday to be canceled. 

Similar rain intensity also wreaked havoc on the East Coast of the United States as areas of Charleston, South Carolina, were forced to shut down roads in response to flooding.
More than 20 streets were closed on Wednesday due to the weather. The heavy downpours coincided with high tide, thus exasperating the flooding.
Three hundred miles to the north, severe flooding in North Carolinasparked widespread evacuations and forced numerous cities to declare a state of emergency.
“Over the weekend, we saw rains that had a serious impact on our state that we will feel for several days,” Governor Roy Cooper said on Monday at a press conference. “Several counties received as much as 12 inches of rain.”
In the press conference, Cooper also mentioned that over 80 water rescues had to be made. Tragically, the weekend flooding also resulted in the deaths of three passengers who were in a vehicle that slid off the road and overturned.

A rare June heat wave engulfed the San Francisco Bay Area this week. On Monday, San Francisco was hotter than Las Vegas as the temperature hit triple digits, a very unusual occurrence for June.
"Temperatures in San Francisco reached 100 F on Monday, which was 3 degrees higher than the maximum temperature at Las Vegas and equaled the high at Sacramento, California," according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dan Pydynowski.
Record heat stretched into the Northwest. Seattle reached 95 on Wednesday, which crushed the old record of 85 from 1999.
san fran high

While severe weather caused grave results around the world this past week, it was a non-severe weather moment that went most viral among weather happenings.
Joe Crain, a popular meteorologist in Springfield, Illinois, was fired this past week after he alerted the public about the "Code Red" policy that he disagreed with. According to Crain, the Sinclair Broadcasting Group has encouraged meteorologists at its affiliate stations to issue "Code Red" warnings for a wide variety of different types of weather, not all of which Crain would have considered severe.
While on the air last Wednesday, Crain spoke out to his audience during a broadcast and told viewers that the rating system wasn't his idea. Rather, he said, it is a "corporate initiative" and he had been working to dissuade it for many months. Viewers of the station had also expressed their disagreement with the term "Code Red."
“When you hear Code Red, you think, as they say, 'the feces is about to hit the fan,'” Crain said in the video. “We understand your concerns, and we want you to know that we take them very seriously.”
Crain's comments were met with the support of thousands of viewers, who similarly flooded the station with complaints after his dismissal. Stephen Colbert, the popular host of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," ran a segment about the firing and mocked the station for "scaring people with the weather."
Ultimately, Crain's efforts proved fruitful despite his firing. WICS NewsChannel 20 announced on Monday that they would no longer be using the "Code Red" warning label. This announcement came in response to a number of area businesses also pulled advertising from WICS, according to The Associated Press, which reported that Illinois Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin also agreed with Crain, and that people should support him.

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