What Stands in a Storm Read Online Free PDF

he raced—his wife would kill him if she knew how fast—to the TV station on the other side of town. Thank goodness the roads were empty at this hour. The commute takes twenty minutes on a regular day. Today he got there in ten.
    This was rare form for Alabama’s favorite weatherman. In a state where only the Gospel is gospel, James Spann’s word is considered the next best thing. A common refrain is: “My mama says, if James Spann says it, it must be true.” Wives have learned not to talk to their husbands during the Iron Bowl or anytime James Spann is on the air.
    Spann, fifty-three, bald on top, gray on the sides, delivered the weather in a deep, crisp baritone. Many of his viewers were outright fans. They called him “my hero,” and “the Man.” They knew if they e-mailed or tweeted him a question, they would get a personal answer. They read his blog and watched his weekly online video talk show, WeatherBrains, on which he and other self-professed “weather weenies” talked shop about meteorology. Spann had more Twitter followers than some national celebrities and had reached Facebook’s max on friends. He may be the only weatherman in history to have his own bobblehead doll.
    Spann fans swore that they could glance at a muted TV and tell you how bad the weather was based on what they could see of Spann’s uniform. Uh-oh, I see suspenders—where’s the tornado? Those visible suspenders meant he had removed his coat, a signal that weather conditions were getting serious, and you had better pay attention. If his sleeves were rolled up, it was time to hide in the closet. “The day the tie comes off,” said one fan, “will be a very, very bad day.”
    When Spann burst into the studio, jacket under his arm, Jason could still hear the sleep in his voice. James looked at Jason and read his face: conditions were bad. They had been a team for seven years and could communicate whole paragraphs with a glance and a gesture. Without a word, they swapped places. Spann stepped in front of the green screen, opened his laptop on a mobile podium, and addressed the black eye of the camera. If he turned his head to the right, he could see himself in front of the weather map on a small monitor just off camera. Beyond that, he could see Jason on the weather desk, behind a row of six monitors that showed the disaster unfolding in many dimensions. Jason gave him a hand signal and the show went on.
    Above them, above the wires and the studio lights and the acoustic dampeners, above the rooftop of the ABC 33/40 station on the hill in south Birmingham, the sky was already churning.

    Jason would never forget the first time he met James Spann. It was April 1998, his senior year at Holly Pond High School. The guidance counselor had pulled him aside and said, “Jason, there’s somebody here I think you need to talk to.” The Storm Link minivan had pulled into the parking lot, and out climbed James Spann, there to give his meteorology talk to the students, to dazzle them with his science. Jason helped carry in a projector and a twenty-pound laptop. On their walk down the hall, the high school senior gushed. When he was bored in class, he drew pictures of megastorms, radars dotted with hook echoes, the supine commas that signaled spiraling winds around a ball of debris. James looked at the kid, and saw promise.
    â€œHow would you like to intern with me this summer?” James said.
    â€œReally?” Jason said. “That would be great!”
    It was seventy miles from his house in rural Holly Pond to the TV station in Birmingham. But that was back when gas cost seventy cents a gallon. He could make the round trip in two hours and on fourdollars. Like a young Jedi, Jason studied James. He watched the way he moved, the way he talked, the clues he noticed, the words he chose. But the kid was one of about thirty interns that year. How could he ever hope to make