Students passing by the Founder’s Memorial Library on Monday afternoon may have noticed a van with a familiar television logo on it, but not one they would expect.

On the van was The Weather Channel logo, where reporter Jorma Duran and his cameraman, Brad Reynolds, were at work creating a news segment for the evening’s broadcast. They came to NIU to speak to professor Walker Ashley about his work.

“We travel the nation covering tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, whatever,” Duran said. “And whenever there’s not severe weather, we try to do normal news stories linked to weather, so that’s why we’re randomly here because this guy wrote about tornadoes.”

Ashley is an assistant professor of geography and a meteorologist at NIU who has done research on the increasing death tolls from tornadoes that strike at night. Ashley was the lead author of the study, and was assisted by NIU geography Chair Andrew Krmenec and Research Associate Rick Schwantes.

The study was published in the October issue of the American Meteorological Society’s journal, “Weather and Forecasting.”

Ashley is grateful for the attention he has been receiving but feels that it is the work that deserves the attention.

“The attention to myself is great, but more importantly it’s on the work,” Ashley said. “That’s where the light should be shown.”

At NIU, the university’s staff meteorologist, Gilbert Sebenste, has found Ashley’s work to be admirable.

“He’s done some really fantastic work in tornado and storm system research,” Sebenste said. “He’s on the academic side and I’m on the professional services side, but we talk quite a bit actually and I keep up to date on what he’s doing and the papers he’s releasing.”

Ashley’s studies found that deaths from nocturnal tornadoes have been increasing over the past half century because of urban development and increased populations spreading out, creating more targets for tornado strikes.

Nocturnal tornadoes have mostly occurred in the mid-southern states of the United States like Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee.

So far this year, 123 deaths from tornadoes have been recorded, which is twice the annual average.

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