Timothy P. Marshall
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Tim Marshall is a civil engineer and meteorologist concentrating on damage analysis, particularly that from wind and other weather phenomena. He is also a pioneering storm chaser and was editor of Stormtrack magazine.
Marshall was raised in Oak Lawn, Illinois in metropolitan Chicago, which was heavily damaged during the historic Belvidere - Oaklawn Tornado Outbreak of April 21, 1967 when he was 10 years old. The F4 "Oak Lawn tornado" touched down about four miles (6.4 km) west of his family's home and killed 33 in town, including classmates of Marshall. Already developed a strong and active interest in meteorology, this experience only strengthened that, and focused it on tornadoes.
He attended Northern Illinois University at DeKalb, attaining a B.S. in meteorology in 1978. As an undergraduate student there, he and classmates surveyed some tornado damage paths of the 1974 Super Outbreak during informal travels to the National Climatic Data Center to collect severe weather data. He began storm chasing in 1977, and met his future wife, Kay, at a party in which they departed to go chasing. In 1980, he earned a M.S. in atmospheric sciences from Texas Tech University in Lubbock.
Marshall continued to maintain a strong interest in meteorology and a prolific producer of scientific papers and conference presentations, but his professional interests moved towards those of damage analysis. He achieved a M.S. in civil engineering from Texas Tech in 1983 and was soon hired by the leading Texas firm Haag Engineering.
Marshall is on the development team of the Fujita Scale Enhancement Project which is producing an Enhanced Fujita Scale to update the original Fujita scale of tornado intensity. He is also a principle trainer in damage surveys for the National Weather Service. Throughout the latter third of 2005 and into 2006, Marshall was leader of a team conducting extensive damage surveys of Hurricane Katrina.
