MAYFIELD, Ky. — WPSD Local 6 Chief Meteorologist Trent Okerson was a featured speaker at the inaugural Hidden Heroes Banquet in Mayfield on Tuesday night.
WPSD Local 6 Chief Meteorologist Trent Okerson was a featured speaker at the inaugural Hidden Heroes Banquet in Mayfield Tuesday night. Held on the third anniversary of the December 2021 tornado outbreak, the event recognized those who “work behind the scenes and in the shadows to impact our community.”
The event aimed to recognize those who “work behind the scenes and in the shadows to impact our community.” Hosted by western Kentucky nonprofit Camp Graves and held at the Trace Creek Baptist Church Life Center, the banquet was held on the third anniversary of the Dec. 10, 2021, tornado outbreak, which killed more than 80 people across the state. Twenty-four of those killed were in hard-hit Mayfield.
Okerson recalled the most difficult moment for him that night: “For me, the hardest part of the coverage that night was when we saw on radar, there’s a big purple ball. We knew that wasn’t rain. We knew that was belongings. That was people’s stuff that we were seeing being carried away on the radar, and it was a mile wide, and we had never seen anything like that in our area before.”
Okerson, along with former WPSD-TV Meteorologists Kaylee Bowers and Noah Bergren, are credited with saving lives of people who were in the path of the tornado that night. The trio stayed on-air for more than five-and-a-half hours as the storm tracked from Arkansas into northwest Tennessee and eventually through Mayfield and parts of Marshall County.
“I also wanted to pass along a hello from Noah and Kaylee. I spoke to both of those folks earlier today, and they were really special teammates that that we got to have in our area for a few years,” Okerson said. “They’re really special people, good friends to me, and you know, we were bonded together because of that experience of covering that event three years ago.”
Okerson said his passion and fascination for meteorology started as a kid growing up in Massac County, Illinois. His family was even impacted by tornadoes in the past.
“I’ve got a family connection to the biggest single tornado in United States history. It was the longest single-track tornado and the deadliest in 1925. My grandparents grew up within about 10 miles of that, and my dad’s home was blown away in the 1960s in Massac County.”
Okerson recalled being at a school visit in Graves County the day before the tornado. He taught the students how to prepare in case of a storm, and where to find a safe place in their home.
“As I’m seeing this mile-wide debris ball going right toward Mayfield, all I can think about is what’s going to happen to those kids and their families two weeks before Christmas? Are they going to be OK? Are they going to be safe? Do they remember what we talked about the day before? And that’s the part of this whole thing where it was hard for me to maintain my composure on air,” he said.
Okerson said as his time continues serving as a meteorologist in west Kentucky and the wider region served by WPSD, he will continue to preach preparedness to the community, so more people will be safe when the next storm comes along.
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