Pato O’Ward was the biggest loser of the race, which in its second year was slowed 10 times for 36 of the 80 laps. I don’t like it, but that’s the game that we’re in.”
They’re very aggressive and if you’re not aggressive back, then you get run over. I probably need to have some discussion with some of the younger guys, but they’re aggressive. “Let me tell you what, I about got taken out six times myself. I don’t know what to tell him,” Newgarden said. Although he was the leader late in the race, Newgarden had to pit for fuel and had later contact with Romain Grosjean, who was furious with Newgarden after the collision. Samantha Max contributed to this reporting.In Nashville, he scaled back his obligations ahead of the race to be rested and able to race for the win. “But we feel a very deep calling, if you want to call it that, to help with this any way we can. “I don’t like these nights,” he said, sounding weary for perhaps the first time all night. Toward the end of the livestream, as the tornadoes moved further from Nashville, Leeper hinted at that. “All three of us have had moments of introspection, counseling - sessions where we talk amongst ourselves, sessions where we talk with professionals - about our feelings following a loss-of-life incident.” But in the days following … you start to hear some of those stories, and they do weigh on you,” he said. “When there is important work to be done, the three of us have the ability to set aside the emotional component and deliver more of a helpful, operational feel to what we do. As of Sunday night, the National Weather Service had confirmed seven tornadoes in Middle Tennessee.īut Minkoff said that being a part of storm coverage, as a kind of first responder, takes a mental toll. Ultimately, the worst of the storm hit elsewhere: It was neighboring Kentucky that suffered the most fatalities, and four people died in West Tennessee. Because while he is helping us, he’s taken a moment from saving our lives to make sure he takes care of his family,” she said.
“So you guys just sit here with this radar while I go wake them up, and I’ll be right back,” he said, calmly, to the thousands of people viewing. This came into sharp focus when Leeper paused his commentary on the livestream to go wake up his family, as a potential tornado came closer to his house. “They are just people who happen to be really, really knowledgeable about things that most of us don’t understand,” she said. He has our hearts.”) But the Nashville Severe Weather partners are also especially relatable in their lack of fancy equipment or state-of-the-art studios. (“Lelan Statom comes into our living rooms. She loves some television meteorologists, she says. She pays attention in part because they’re primarily on Twitter, which makes the information easy for Hawkins to access on her phone. “He’s like, ‘Get your shoes, get into your safe place.’ And I mean, like a 5-year-old kid, I woke my husband up, we got our dog, and we went into the tiny little bathroom in my house. All right? You don’t have much time left.”Ī while later, as the storm front moved east, he gave the same directions to residents in Hermitage, where Hawkins lives. “If you’re in western Davidson County, you’ve got to enact your tornado plan now. Listen to me,” he said at one point, while sitting alone in his home office. “What we really spend our time planning for is who’s going to get rest when,” he said.īut it was all-hands-on-deck for much of the night, as partner Andrew Leeper started up a livestream and the tornado warnings started rolling in. When storms are expected, the operation is a well-oiled machine, as partner Will Minkoff explained to WPLN News: One partner handles incoming reports and questions, another handles outgoing tweets, and the third runs the livestream video. On Saturday, tens of thousands watched the account’s YouTube livestream. They are not meteorologists - although they do partner with the National Weather Service to get information out to the public - but they’ve become a go-to resource for many during potential natural disasters. run by three men for whom weather is a passion but not a full-time job, has now been sharing tweet-sized weather updates for more than a decade. Saturday, she opened Twitter and started following along with an account that had kept her company during storms past. When Hermitage resident Vesia Hawkins woke up at 1:30 a.m.