It's an odd community of pros who like nothing better than to talk about the weather. They don't do anything about it beyond that. No one has figured out how to nip a tornado off its supercell or divert a hurricane, nor is anyone foolish enough to try. But if weather forecasting was once a few degrees removed from reading tea leaves in clouds, Norman's researchers are turning it into something distantly neighboring a science. Unquestionably, the combination of Doppler radar and weather spotters has reduced the number of tornado fatalities from an annual average of 200 before the 1950s to about 50 today.
Storms create a similar quandary on a different scale.
I never thought that weather could be a subject for ethicists. In Norman, it can seem like it is the most critical thing on earth. And of course, in some ways, it is. It's the Middle East's only claim to temperance. At the same time, bad weather is the most native American phenomenon of all.