Birds sensed severe storms and fled before tornado outbreak

Golden-winged warblers apparently knew in advance that a storm that would spawn 84 confirmed tornadoes and kill at least 35 people last spring was coming, according to a report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 18. The birds left the scene well before devastating supercell storms blew in.

The discovery was made quite by accident while researchers were testing whether the warblers, which weigh "less than two nickels," could carry geolocators on their backs. It turns out they can, and much more. With a big storm brewing, the birds took off from their breeding ground in the Cumberland Mountains of eastern Tennessee, where they had only just arrived, for an unplanned migratory event. All told, the warblers travelled 1,500 kilometers in 5 days to avoid the historic tornado-producing storms.

"The most curious finding is that the birds left long before the storm arrived," says Henry Streby of the University of California, Berkeley. "At the same time that meteorologists on The Weather Channel were telling us this storm was headed in our direction, the birds were apparently already packing their bags and evacuating the area."

The birds fled from their breeding territories more than 24 hours before the arrival of the storm, Streby and his colleagues report. The researchers suspect that the birds did it by listening to infrasound associated with the severe weather, at a level well below the range of human hearing.

"Meteorologists and physicists have known for decades that tornadic storms make very strong infrasound that can travel thousands of kilometers from the storm," Streby explains. While the birds might pick up on some other cue, he adds, the infrasound from severe storms travels at exactly the same frequency the birds are most sensitive to hearing.

The findings show that birds that follow annual migratory routes can also take off on unplanned trips at other times of the year when conditions require it. That's probably good news for birds, as climate change is expected to produce storms that are both stronger and more frequent. But there surely must be a downside as well, the researchers say.

"Our observation suggests [that] birds aren't just going to sit there and take it with regards to climate change, and maybe they will fare better than some have predicted," Streby says. "On the other hand, this behavior presumably costs the birds some serious energy and time they should be spending on reproducing." The birds' energy-draining journey is just one more pressure human activities are putting on migratory songbirds.

In the coming year, Streby's team will deploy hundreds of geolocators on the golden-winged warblers and related species across their entire breeding range to find out where they spend the winter and how they get there and back.

"I can't say I'm hoping for another severe tornado outbreak," Streby says, "but I am eager to see what unpredictable things happen this time."

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Severe storms, possible tornado lash Illinois

OKAWVILLE, Ill. (AP) -- Cleanup efforts were under way Wednesday in southern Illinois after a storm pounded the region with large hail and as much of six inches of rain, and spawned an apparent tornado that overturned a tractor trailer and leveled farm outbuildings.

Okawville Police Chief Steve Millikin said a tornado that he videotaped Tuesday night on his dashboard camera clipped the northern edge of his 1,400-resident Washington County village, narrowly missing the community's downtown.

"We got lucky, to be flat honest with you," he told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "Had it come a half mile to the south, it would have come right through town, and we would have had a mess."

Millikin said the trucker in the semi rig that was blown over on Interstate 64 was slightly injured. He also said the storm leveled a house being built and damaged roofs and farm structures.

Eyewitness reports and video appear to confirm that a tornado caused that damage, although the intensity, path and length of that twister were expected to be determined Wednesday, said meteorologist Ben Miller of the National Weather Service in St. Louis.

"We're pretty sure it's a tornado," Miller said.

Portions of southern Illinois got pelted by hail at times as big as pingpong balls, with 4 to 6 inches of rain dumped by the storm since Tuesday night causing flash flooding.

Miller said the storms were expected to hound the region perhaps into the weekend.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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April 2011 - The Tornado Numbers Are In!

The National Weather Service and Storm Prediction Center have now compiled and released the official counts of the actual number of tornadoes that occurred in April 2011. Until now there had only been preliminary counts, which often include duplicate reports of multiple sightings of the same tornado.

The actual number of tornadoes in April 2011 is a staggering 753! This is 2.8 times the old April record of 267 set in 1974 (which included the April 3-4 "Superoutbreak"). It's over 200 more than the previous record for ANY month, which was 542 in May 2003.

The table below shows additional statistics from the incredible April. There were 364 fatalities. That's the most for any month since April 1936 when there were 509 tornado deaths. There were four tornadoes rated EF5 (all on April 27). That's the most for any month (and any day) since 1974 when there were seven rated F5 on April 3 (by NWS; Fujita rated six of them F5).

April 27th brought the most tornadoes. The National Weather Service keeps records for calendar days using Central Standard Time (CST), and there were 202 on April 27, the most on record for any such day. There were 320 fatalities on that day, third deadliest in United States history and deadliest since March 21, 1932.

These new statistics update those from previous blogs, including one from June 13 and one on April 29. Stu Ostro also wrote blogs on May 2 and on April 18 about some of these tornadoes.

May 2011 was also an active tornado month, including the tragic Joplin, Missouri tornado on May 22. Then National Weather Service now lists 157 direct deaths from that tornado, plus additional indirect fatalities.

In all, 55 killer tornadoes have brought 546 direct deaths so far in 2011. My preliminary tornado count (including the actual tornado counts through April and my best estimates subsequently) is 1476 tornadoes through July 31. That's the most on record for the first seven months of the year, beating out 2008 which had 1397 in that period.

So we're still on a record tornado pace for the year, but the pace has fortunately slowed over the past two months. In an average year 348 tornadoes (27% of the yearly total) occur during the months from August through December. A substantial number of them typically come from tropical cyclones. Others come from frontal systems in the fall and early winter. No month is safe from tornadoes. Hopefully none will be as bad as what we've already seen this year!

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The Katrina of tornado outbreaks

Our thoughts at TWC are with those who have been affected by the recent siege of severe weather including twisters, wind/hail damage, and flooding.

Here are some thoughts about last week's catastrophic tornado outbreak ...

Terrible perfection

I posted that graphic last Wednesday afternoon on my TWC Facebook page. The ingredients were "textbook." I mean, literally what I learned from a textbook more than 30 years ago. The atmosphere was explosively unstable with summerlike heat and humidity, interacting with a classic wind shear setup as a strong jet stream and upper-level trough crashed overhead. Also, dry air aloft (dark red shades on the left image below) put a lid on things and allowed the energy to build up until it blew sky high.

[Image source: NCAR/UCAR]

Not only were the elements perfect for a tornado outbreak, they were present to an extreme degree. The observed EHI ("Energy Helicity Index"), a measure which represents a combination of instability and wind shear, was extraordinary, higher than during the time of two notorious [E]F5s, the Moore, Oklahoma and Greensburg, Kansas tornadoes on May 3, 1999 and May 4, 2007, respectively.

Such a set of combustible ingredients, plus a remarkable number of supercells with hook echoes on radar and "ground-truth" observations of tornadoes, led Dr. Forbes and me to decide to up TWC's "TOR:CON" index to a 10 for northern Alabama, meaning a 100% chance of a tornado within 50 miles, the first time that's been done since the product was developed a couple of years ago.

Capricious

Many counties have been affected by the calamity, with the effects extending beyond just those people and locations struck directly by the tornadoes. Yet even with this widespread an outbreak, an extremely small percentage of the land area of northern and central AL was actually hit.

Above are screen captures from a video taken from a helicopter during Dr. Forbes' aerial survey of the damage. Tornadoes never cease to amaze me in their capriciousness, even in a situation such as this with relatively widespread devastation, leaving one part of a neighborhood unscathed while an adjacent one is in ruins.

Tornado Alley?

Last week's outbreak, and the past month of tornadoes, reinforce that "Tornado Alley" is *not* just in the Great Plains.

The first map below is one that in the past TWC has shown, and NOAA has graphics online depicting a similar area.

The second map plots all tornadoes in the official database which are [E]F 3 and higher on the [Enhanced] Fujita scale, those which account for approximately 3/4 of all tornado fatalities. IMO, true Tornado Alley is represented by the much broader area in which all those red lines are concentrated.

What about climate change / global warming?

What's needed relative to this question is an apolitical, non-reactionary, objective assessment. However, as soon as the extremity of last week's outbreak became apparent, there were, as is usually the case, reactions on two extremes. One headline on the web blared that hundreds were killed in "states represented by climate pollution deniers," while a high-ranking federal government official was reported to have dismissed climate change as a factor, quoted as saying, "Actually what we're seeing is springtime."

The former is obscene and the latter fails to represent what's happened weatherwise recently, which actually, no, has not been a typical month in spring.

On the one hand there is no decisive trend in overall tornado occurrences, and while in recent years there's been a rash of outbreaks which have been unusually far north and intense for the time of year (including the one in Wisconsin last month), the one last Wednesday was geographically consistent with April climatology.

On the other hand, this event needs to be considered in the *context* of the relentless series of severe thunderstorm and tornado outbreaks which started on April 4 and culminated on the 27th. The number of severe weather reports and confirmed tornadoes has been atypical even by April standards, shattering the previous records. Even taking into account limitations of the historical record, the numbers have been stunning.

As noted above, the combination of instability and wind shear was extreme even by classic tornado setup standards. The temperature in Laredo reached 111 degrees the day prior to the peak outbreak, the hottest on record at that location for so early in the season. Precipitation extremes have been extreme even by extreme precipitation standards, with April rainfall upwards of 20" in Arkansas and record levels on some rivers in the central U.S., juxtaposed with an exceptionally large amount of Texas being classified in extreme or exceptional drought. [Tue May 3 addendum: And the warmest April on record in the UK.]

And all of this is in the context of a relentless series of extreme weather events in the U.S. and other countries during the months preceding April, and many others worldwide during recent years which I've documented and which have had apparent a physical connection with a warmer atmosphere.

I've also read categorical statements assigning a one-to-one cause-effect attribution to La Nina. But while La Nina is present now as it was during the 1974 Superoutbreak, it was not during some of the other most notorious outbreaks of all time, such as the 2002 Van Wert / Mossy Grove, 1999 Oklahoma, 1991 Andover KS, 1984 Carolinas, and 1965 Palm Sunday outbreaks.

The atmosphere is extraordinarily complex, and ultimately what's happened the past month is probably a combination of influences, including La Nina, other natural variability, and anthropogenic global warming.

Bigger than the Superoutbreak?

Hanging on the wall of my office at TWC (low-res cellphone pic above) is an original map of the April 3-4, 1974 Superoutbreak, which I've had since the '70s (a high-res online map can be seen via this link). As Dr. Forbes said a few days ago in his blog about it, that event is the benchmark for tornado outbreaks.

As soon as the number of tornado reports from last Wednesday exceeded 148, the number of tornadoes within 24 hours in the 1974 Superoutbreak, there was talk about this outbreak being bigger than that one. I sent an email to the staff at TWC on this topic and provided commentary about it on camera, as I wanted to make sure that there was awareness of how extreme The Superoutbreak was and that the proper perspective is being applied in comparing the two.

That one had *thirty* F4 or higher tornadoes on the original Fujita scale. Communities were reeling from that level of damage in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. Among those 30, six F5s occurred across five of those states. Tornadoes struck along a total path length of more than *2500* miles.

We'll need to await the final numbers before doing a final comparison, but with the latest information as of this writing, and even accounting for subjectivity and changes in tornado assessments over the years and decades as the Fujita Scale evolved into the Enhanced Fujita Scale, it looks like the April 27, 2011 outbreak will fall far short of some of those '74 numbers.

It's not just all about the total number of tornadoes, plus, despite definitive official statements about a total of 211 having occurred (and a report today that it's been raised to 312!), any such estimates are premature, as those are just preliminary *reports*, some of which were duplicates of the same long-track tornadoes.

That all having been said, no matter how this all shakes out in the end, the April 27, 2011 outbreak will go down as one of the biggest and worst on record. The amount of energy it unleashed is hard to comprehend.

By why do any of these such statistics even matter? Well, scientific assessments of ingredients and results help meteorologists understand the phenomena and factors and climatology involved, and apply that to forecasting future events.

But to people who have lost their lives, and their surviving family, friends, and colleagues, the meteorological statistics don't matter. Those folks are gone. And the latest death toll is now well over 300 and higher than that of the Superoutbreak and among the few highest on record in the U.S. from a tornado outbreak, and with many other people still unaccounted for.

The Katrina of tornado outbreaks

So that makes this the Katrina of tornado outbreaks, in the sense that it's a vivid and tragic reminder that although high death tolls from tornadoes and hurricanes are much less common than they were in the 19th and first part of the 20th centuries, we are not immune to them, even in this era of modern meteorological and communication technology.

Timely and accurate outlooks were disseminated in the hours and days leading up to the outbreak as well as short-term warnings once the supercells formed. This included "tornado emergency" level warnings by the National Weather Service; in fact, there were so many of those issued that it was mind-boggling.

I think I speak for all meteorologists/forecasters when I say that I/we are at peace with feeling like we did everything we could while also being heartbroken that it still wasn't enough. My heart sank as more and more reports of extreme damage came in that evening with a fatality count that has kept rising since then.

The power of the atmosphere is overwhelming, and how vulnerable we are to it has been reinforced yet again. Weather is as awe-inspiring, fascinating, mysterious, fearsome, and humbling as when I first became obsessed with it as a child. I wish it didn't have to have such tragic consequences.

[Image source: http://bit.ly/jlOpvd]

ADDENDUM 3PM EDT TUESDAY MAY 3, 2011

To follow up on some of the comments received so far ...

For those who do not understand why I chose Katrina as the hurricane to highlight, perhaps this will help. It illustrates what I was referring to in that portion of the blog entry, which is the death toll of tornado outbreaks and hurricanes in the era of modern technology vs. prior to that.

View the original article here

Tornado Outbreaks Then and Now - Apples and Oranges?

Early in my graduate school experience I had the privilege of surveying the damage from many of the April 3-4, 1974 Superoutbreak tornadoes as part of Dr. Fujita's team. 148 tornadoes struck in 48 hours. Six of the tornadoes in that outbreak were rated F5 (on the original Fujita Scale) and 30 were rated F4 or stronger. There were more than 300 fatalities, over 5000 injuries, and the sum of tornado path lengths exceeded 2500 miles. The Superoutbreak has been the benchmark for all tornado outbreaks since.

I always thought that there was a chance that some future tornado outbreak might be worse. The most recent one could be, at least in some respects. Damage surveys are still in progress that will bring us the true count of the number of tornadoes, their EF-Scale ratings, path lengths and widths, and other measures of the outbreak's fury. The National Weather Service, using preliminary data, has already indicated that its tornado count might exceed the number of tornadoes in the Superoutbreak.

Once Doppler radars were deployed across the United States in the early 1990s, though, I never thought I'd see a tornado outbreak kill hundreds of people again. How sad that it has happened on Wednesday. More than 200 people were killed in Alabama alone and more than 300 in total, according to news reports! The Doppler radars allow us to see tornadoes and their parent thunderstorms' rotating updrafts like never before, and the National Weather Service issues tornado warnings with an average of 13 minutes of lead time (in advance of the tornado), and often much more than that. Combine that with so many more - and more efficient - ways of getting the warnings in this internet era and it's a "different world" relative to the 80-character-per-second teletypes that gave warnings to the media (and not directly to the public) back in 1974. People can get timely and effective warnings on NOAA Weather Radio, on The Weather Channel, from services like TWC's "Nofify!" that can personally send you a message that a tornado is coming, and in many other ways.

It's apples versus oranges in the relative ability for people to know a tornado was coming in the two eras. Yet so many died in 2011. That must be a function of the violence of the tornadoes, combined with the fact that so many took aim on communities rather than rural areas. And when tornadoes are violent, even being warned and taking proper safety measures is no guarantee of survival. Finding proper shelter improves your odds, but only being in an underground shelter or specially designed in-home shelter can ensure your survival.

But it's also a "different world" in the way that tornadoes get rated. The mainstay of the original Fujita Scale used to rate tornadoes was that a home crushed into small pieces and blown away would earn an F5 rating, with wind speeds estimated at 261-318 mph. Engineers surveying the tornado damage back in 1974 began to tell meteorologists that it didn't take 300 mph winds to turn homes into piles of rubble and cast the pieces to the wind. Even well constructed concrete block and brick school buildings could fail in 220 mph winds, they said. And homes with damage apparently fitting an F5 description often happened because the house was not properly secured to its foundation in winds less than 150 mph.

In the years since, these engineering analyses began to work their way into damage assessments, and in 2007 an Enhanced Fujita Scale (EF Scale) system was officially implemented. An EF5 tornado has winds estimated as low as 201 mph. And it's difficult to rate a tornado as EF5 based upon it just demolishing a house.

Statistically, the number of tornadoes being rated 2-5 have been decreasing since the 1970s, despite the total number of tornadoes being recorded showing a dramatic increase. This is at least partly a consequence of the introduction of engineering concepts into the rating process. I was part of the team that developed the EF Scale, and it's a system that more accurately estimates tornado wind speeds. But it troubled me then (and still does) that it might be hard to compare past tornado outbreaks with future ones and determine which was worst. It's apples and oranges, to some extent, in the rating systems then and now.

April outbreak versus Superoutbreak?It will be interesting to see just how many tornadoes were in this April's outbreak, and how many get rated EF5. But the death toll, the number of tornadoes in a 24-hour period, and the total path length of the tornadoes may be more appropriate measures by which to compare it to the Superoutbreak than the number rated EF5. Amazingly, the April 2011 death toll already appears to be worse!

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A Terrible Tornado Year

*** Note: This blog was updated on June 19 to reflect new data that has come in on the number of EF5 tornadoes and tornado fatalities ***

Unless you live under a rock, as the saying goes (as featured in a current commercial), you must be aware of what a horrific year it has been for tornadoes. Only the pictures of the death and destruction can give the full picture of just how awful it has been. But I thought I'd present a little data to tell the story in a less traumatic way.
The table below gives the preliminary tornado counts for the spring and year-to-date (through June 12). April was the huge anomaly. Its 762 preliminary tornadoes are over 200 more than the previous record for any month (542 in May 2003). The 1282 tornadoes through June 12 are as many as the United States had in all of 2010! Only six years on record have had more tornadoes for a full year. Thanks to April, we're on a record yearly pace. Fortunately, the pace in June has slowed down to well below average thus far. Springfield and other Massachusetts communities, unfortunately, weren't spared on June 1.

The pace in May was barely above average number-wise, but it featured the ultra-deadly EF5 tornado in Joplin Missouri on May 22 and another EF5 tornado in Oklahoma on May 24. This brings the number of EF5 tornadoes for 2011 to 6. Only 1974 had more. The Joplin tornado is the deadliest tornado in the United States since 1947.

The table below shows how violent and deadly 2011 has been relative to an average year. The 540 deaths are the most for a year since 1936. The 56 killer tornadoes are the most since 1974 and ninth-most on record since 1880. Prior to 1974, you have to go back to 1942 to find another year with more killer tornadoes than in 2011!

Following the April 26-28, 2011 tornado outbreak, I wrote a
blog pondering how many records set in the April 3-4, 1974 Superoutbreak would fall. While the totals aren't final or official, April 27 beat out the 1974 Superoutbreak in number of tornadoes, number of deaths, and number of tornadoes with widths of 400 yards or more. No wonder that some are calling it the "2011 Superoutbreak."

By my method of defining a tornado outbreak, there was a actually a 49-hour tornado outbreak from the afternoon of April 26 through the afternoon of April 28, 2011. This outbreak set new records for any known outbreak for numbers of tornadoes (at least 259), number of tornadoes with width of 400 yards or more (at least 52), combined tornado paths (over 2600 miles), and number of states hit (18).

The 1974 Superoutbreak still holds several records, including the numbers of tornadoes rated F2 and higher, F4 and higher, and killer tornadoes. Certainly these helped it to cause approximately the same number of deaths as in the 2011 Superoutbreak.

What has been most shocking to me is that 2011 has brought so many tornado deaths in this era of excellent Doppler radar-based tornado warnings, excellent advance forecasts, and multiple ways of communicating/receiving tornado warnings and weather forecasts. Yet the death tolls are like what took place before there was any weather radar; before there were any tornado warnings issued by the National Weather Service; before there were any computers! I never thought I ?d see these death tolls nowadays.

I suppose that the message from the deadly 2011 tornadoes is that warnings aren't enough when the tornadoes are violent with long and wide paths. That combination of path width and length gives so much area having winds in excess of 100 mph that too many homes get hit and destroyed. And when the path hits communities, the toll is high. Urban sprawl has increased the target areas of these metropolitan "bulls-eyes." The safety rules of going to the lowest, innermost location in your home raise your odds of surviving, but aren't absolute guarantees. There are few places that are safe in a violent tornado. Being in an underground storm shelter or a specially built in-home storm shelter is the only way to be absolutely safe.

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Severe storms, possible tornado lash Illinois

OKAWVILLE, Ill. (AP) -- Cleanup efforts were under way Wednesday in southern Illinois after a storm pounded the region with large hail and as much of six inches of rain, and spawned an apparent tornado that overturned a tractor trailer and leveled farm outbuildings.

Okawville Police Chief Steve Millikin said a tornado that he videotaped Tuesday night on his dashboard camera clipped the northern edge of his 1,400-resident Washington County village, narrowly missing the community's downtown.

"We got lucky, to be flat honest with you," he told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "Had it come a half mile to the south, it would have come right through town, and we would have had a mess."

Millikin said the trucker in the semi rig that was blown over on Interstate 64 was slightly injured. He also said the storm leveled a house being built and damaged roofs and farm structures.

Eyewitness reports and video appear to confirm that a tornado caused that damage, although the intensity, path and length of that twister were expected to be determined Wednesday, said meteorologist Ben Miller of the National Weather Service in St. Louis.

"We're pretty sure it's a tornado," Miller said.

Portions of southern Illinois got pelted by hail at times as big as pingpong balls, with 4 to 6 inches of rain dumped by the storm since Tuesday night causing flash flooding.

Miller said the storms were expected to hound the region perhaps into the weekend.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Tornado leaves 3 dead in Missouri

ST. LOUIS (AP) – A man and his two adult sons died when a tornado obliterated a mobile home in southeast Missouri, officials said Tuesday.

By Adam Vogler, AP

A donkey wanders through debris in the back yard of Loy Miller's home after a tornado passed through the area in Diehlstadt, Mo. on Tuesday. The storm struck late Monday, killing three men, including Miller.

By Adam Vogler, AP

A donkey wanders through debris in the back yard of Loy Miller's home after a tornado passed through the area in Diehlstadt, Mo. on Tuesday. The storm struck late Monday, killing three men, including Miller.

The twister was part of a storm that struck Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky late Monday, but hit hardest in the tiny village of Diehlstadt, in Scott County, where the three men were killed.

Scott County Sheriff Rick Walter said the mobile home was smashed beyond recognition.

"The frame was probably 100 yards away from where it was sitting," Walter said. "It was just debris everywhere. It just obliterated it."

Missouri State Highway Patrol Trooper Clark Parrott identified the deceased as 70-year-old Loy Miller, the owner of the trailer, and his sons, Jasper Miller, 50, and Randy Miller, 48. Parrott said it wasn't clear if the sons also lived in the mobile home.

"We had a pretty intense, concentrated storm," Parrott said.

An 11-year-old St. Louis County girl suffered minor head and arm injuries after being pelted by huge chunks of hail.

The gusty storm developed in the St. Louis area Monday afternoon, producing nearly an inch of rain and pingpong-sized hail in some places while leaving others bone dry, National Weather Service meteorologist Chris Sanders said. Hail, about an inch of rain and winds stronger than 50 mph were also reported in parts of southern Illinois and northwestern Kentucky.

The storm became particularly intense in southeast Missouri, and Diehlstadt, a village of 163 residents about 100 miles south of St. Louis, took the worst of it. The weather service said 52 homes and several businesses in the Diehlstadt area had damage, mostly to roofs. A church lost its steeple, and dozens of trees were uprooted or snapped.

Downed power lines closed Highway 77 for several hours, Parrott said. Power was restored before dawn.

The weather service determined the EF-2 tornado was 75 yards wide and had peak winds of 115 mph. Witnesses told Walter they saw a tornado dip down and strike the trailer, then bounce back up and dip down again elsewhere.

The storm was very much hit-and-miss. In the St. Louis area, Chesterfield on the east side of the Missouri River saw a downpour of sideways-blowing rain and hail around 4:30 p.m.; Weldon Spring, on the other side of the river, was virtually dry.

Monday's storm was so spotty that it did virtually nothing to relieve moderate to severe drought conditions in the area.

"We need a couple of inches of rain, big-time," Sanders said. "Heading into May we were above normal rainfall, but May just really killed it."

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Wyo. tornado injures at least one

A tornado touched down this afternoon in southeastern Wyoming, causing at least one injury, according to news reports.

Update at 7:35 p.m. ET: One person was treated at Platte County Memorial Hospital in Wheatland for an unspecified minor injury, the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle says.

The twister lasted on and off for about an hour before dissipating northeast of Chugwater, a meteorologist told the Cheyenne paper.

Golf-ball-size hail was reported around Wheatland, with 2-inch hail in Laramie, the National Weather Service says.

Several tornado touchdowns from a separate storm were reported north of Cheyenne.

Original post: A tornado touched down in southeastern Wyoming this afternoon, causing at least one injury, according to news reports from the Equality State.

The quarter-mile-wide twister hit east of Wheatland about 3:15 p.m. MT (5:15 p.m. ET) and moved southeast across I-25, a National Weather Service meteorologist told the Casper Star-Tribune. The town of 3,500, in Platte County, is 70 miles north of Cheyenne.

The Platte County emergency coordinator told the Star-Tribune there were multiple injuries. A Wheatland Police dispatcher told K2-TV that one injury was confirmed and that police were checking homes for other injuries.

Structural damage was reported, but the location and extent were not yet clear, K2 says.

A storm chaser tweeted this photo of the funnel cloud.

Violent weather was moving across the Plains region. In Colorado, Denver and 12 other counties are under a tornado warning until 8 p.m. MT (10 p.m. ET), the Denver Post says.

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Breaking Down the March Tornado Outbreak

New images from the nation's Storm Prediction Center show how much of the South and Midwest were affected by the severe weather and tornadoes on Friday (March 2).

An entire month's worth of tornadoes struck across parts of the country from March 2 into the morning of March 3. The Storm Prediction Center received 81 reports of tornadoes on March 2, according to data filtered to remove duplicate reports of tornadoes. For the entire month of March, the 10-year average number of tornadoes is 87, according to the Weather Channel's severe weather expert Greg Forbes. The National Weather Service's storm survey teams have not yet confirmed the tornado reports, so these numbers could change. But if the numbers hold, the outbreak could go down as the largest single-day outbreak in March history.

In 2006, the biggest March outbreak saw 105 tornadoes from March 9 to 13. March 12 of that outbreak saw 62 confirmed tornadoes. Yesterday's outbreak could top that total.

The unfiltered storm reports in one new image show that the Storm Prediction Center received 128 tornado reports on March 2.

To see how the March 2 outbreak compared with the April 27, 2011, outbreak — the largest tornado outbreak in recorded history — meteorologists at the Storm Prediction Center compared the tornado and severe weather warnings issued during those outbreaks (image below). On the March 2 outbreak, the area of warning covered nearly 500,000 square miles (1.3 million square kilometers).

During the April 27 outbreak, the area of warning covered more than 1 million square miles (2.6 million square km).The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration created a map of areas with high rotational velocity — an important ingredient for forming tornadoes — using data from NOAA's network of NEXRAD radar installations, processed by the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla. By examining these images, forecasters can determine the approximate tracks of so-called supercells, which feature strong rotation and are known for producing tornadoes. Some of these supercells had rotational velocity up to 180 mph (290 kph), and so their signature stands out from the surrounding storm areas. Features such as these are watched carefully for possible tornado outbreaks.

An from NOAA's Suomi NPP VIIRS instrument shows the overshooting cloud tops and intense storms associated with March 2 tornado outbreak. The imagery was acquired over Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. Polar-orbiting satellites track the subtle changes in the environment that can trigger potentially deadly weather conditions, from tornadoes to tropical storms. Current operational POES data was critical for issuing watches and advisories days in advance of this outbreak.

You can follow OurAmazingPlanet staff writer Brett Israel on Twitter: @btisrael. Follow OurAmazingPlanet for the latest in Earth science and exploration news on Twitter @OAPlanet and on Facebook.

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Snow, cold temperatures hamper U.S. tornado clean-up

WEST LIBERTY, Kentucky (Reuters) - A winter snowstorm and freezing temperatures on Monday hampered clean-up efforts in Indiana and Kentucky, the states hardest hit by a wave of powerful tornadoes and storms that killed dozens of people.

Three to five inches of snow fell in southern Indiana and north-central Kentucky, where recovery efforts were underway after at least 30 tornadoes ripped through the region on Friday, the National Weather Service said.

In West Liberty, Kentucky, emergency and security personnel, insurance inspectors, business owners and their employees gathered on the main street to assess the damage amid fears heavy wet snow would cause weakened buildings to collapse.

"Anything we can do to get back to normal business, (residents) will see that as a reason to believe we can recover," said Linda Oakley, who visited the damaged flower shop where she works, accompanied by her husband and firefighters.

The storms and tornadoes that struck the Midwest and South on Friday splintered blocks of homes and tossed around vehicles like toys. They came on the heels of severe weather that killed about a dozen people earlier in the week.

Officials said at least 39 people died in the latest wave of storms - 21 in Kentucky, 13 in Indiana, three in Ohio and one in Alabama. Georgia also reported a storm-related death.

Among the dead was a 14-month-old girl who succumbed to her injuries in a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, on Sunday, two days after she was found in a field after a tornado hit the New Pekin, Indiana, area. Nearby lay the lifeless bodies of her parents and two siblings.

Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear said on Sunday the storm had caused at least $5.8 million in property damage. He has signed an executive order barring price gouging for food and other necessities.

HARD TO FORECAST

The destruction raised fears that 2012 would be another bad tornado season in the United States. A total of 550 deaths were blamed on twisters last year, the deadliest in nearly a century, according to the National Weather Service.

Greg Carbin, a meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association's storm prediction center, said tornadoes often formed in March and April but added that it was hard to predict how severe the 2012 season would be.

Tornadoes typically occur in the United States between March and July, when warm, moist air meets cooler, dry air in the atmosphere. Some parts of the country experience a late tornado season in autumn.

"There's nothing that points at something above or below normal," Carbin said.

The weather in hard-hit areas, however, was expected to begin improving on Monday. The snowstorm was moving east and expected to drop up to three inches of snow in Virginia and in West Virginia before heading out to sea by evening.

"A high-pressure system will give clean-up crews tranquil weather through at least the middle part of the week," said Andy Mussoline, a meteorologist at AccuWeather.com. "A gradual warm-up supported by plenty of sunshine will follow."

(Editing By Ellen Wulfhorst and Paul Simao)

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Tornado victims flock to Facebook for helping hand

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Residents of the storm-ravaged communities in the Midwest are reaching out to each other, neighbor to neighbor, through social media sites to coordinate disaster relief and share information.

A chain of fast-moving tornadoes spawned by massive thunderstorms cut a swath of destruction from the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, killing at least 39 people and leaving many residents homeless and seeking food, clothing, and shelter.

With phone connections spotty as emergency workers tried to repair downed power lines and clear debris, Facebook pages -- accessible by cell phone, mobile device, or computer -- have proven a go-to source for communities to assist one another.

In Morning View, Kentucky, Piner Baptist Church member Bea Angel turned to a Facebook group coordinating help in northern Kentucky to ask for flashlights, baby bottles, baby juice, sippy cups, newborn diapers and other items the church was collecting.

"A gentleman at our church lost everything on Friday and only has the clothes on his back. Looking for men's size 46 pants and XXL shirts," Jennifer Farwell Jewell of Independence, Kentucky, wrote on the page. Community members responded immediately with offers to purchase or donate clothing.

"This type of care and concern is what makes Facebook, and the internet well worth having!" said Timothy Anneken of Fort Wright, Kentucky, on the Facebook page.

At a firehouse in London, a town in the southeast corner of Kentucky, dozens of volunteers gathered to help with salvage efforts and other residents drove up to donate boxes of pizza to the hungry.

One volunteer leader there, 31-year-old medical assistant Heather Reynolds, issued a call on her Facebook page for gloves to protect against the cold, plastic tarps to close holes gouged into homes and clear plastic containers to protect keepsakes found strewn on the ground and threatened by rain and snow already pelting the area.

"Well it looks a lot better than it looked yesterday. However, it will take years for things to be right," Reynolds said.

Dozens of residents in the storm-hit areas have already taken to Facebook to begin planning fundraisers, from raffles and concerts to dance-a-thons, for when the first wave of disaster recovery is over.

"Last few days, we've kept up on the news related to the storms, traded information about who was okay or not, passed notice of missing people, and then the good news that they were found," said Paul Schewene on Facebook, adding that the Facebook groups were "a lot of friends and neighbors reminding them that they're not alone, and that we'll all do what we can to get 'em back on their feet and moving toward recovery."

Critter-conscious residents have even created Facebook groups for pets lost and found during the tornadoes, with the occasional happy reunion complete with heart-warming photos of owners reunited with their best friends.

(Additional reporting by John D. Stoll in Kentucky; Editing by Peter Bohan)

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Tornado creates worries in bankrupt Ala. county (AP)

CENTER POINT, Ala. – Willie Williams Jr. was worried as he walked through his tornado-tossed neighborhood to his daughter's elementary school.

His home is in Jefferson County, which filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history in November, and Williams wonders how the county will rebuild the school as well as pay crews to clear debris and do other services.

"We're lacking. We need more help," Williams said. "Everybody just needs to pray."

After months of hearing how the county government is broke, residents are curious about how much local assistance is available to help them recover from tornadoes that killed two and wiped out scores of homes and businesses.

Touring the area, Gov. Robert Bentley promised the state will do everything it can to help Jefferson County, the state's largest county.

"We'll do whatever is necessary," Bentley said outside the mangled shell of Center Point Elementary School. As he spoke, chainsaws screamed in the distance.

Bentley wasn't specific about what help may be coming, but county emergency management coordinator Allen Kniphfer said the answer may be a combination of federal and state dollars, plus equipment and personnel loans from cities.

"If people want to donate to help us we'll take it," Kniphfer said.

The National Weather Service said at least six different tornadoes skipped across central Alabama, causing damage across a wide area. The strongest hit Jefferson County with winds up to 150 mph.

Jefferson County leaders have said they would likely use reserve money to pay for emergency assistance, but the state and federal governments could end up reimbursing part or all of the cost.

The director of the Alabama Emergency Management Agency, Art Faulkner, said state troopers have provided traffic control and additional security to help Jefferson County.

"We are there to help the local government when they get to the point where they can't effectively respond," said Faulkner.

Jefferson County has reduced its payroll by more than 500 people through layoffs and attrition. With the county citing more than $4 billion in debt and in search of new revenue to replace a tax that was struck down by courts, leaders have closed satellite courthouses and curtailed operating hours in some offices.

Clara Carlin, 74, sat outside her home of 30 years as a Southern Baptist relief team removed fallen trees that punched holes in her roof. Carlin said she has a hard time trusting assurances of aid from Washington all the way down to City Hall.

"I don't think that it's anytime soon that the government can help anybody get over this," said Carlin, who plans to move in with her sister temporarily.

Monica Finley, a second-grade teacher at Center Point Elementary, had her own concerns about government response as she awaited Bentley's arrival at the school. She looked across a neighborhood that was heavily damaged by a twister and feared for the displaced residents. "They're going to need housing," she said.

During his visit to the school, Bentley received a report that included 20 suggestions from the Tornado Recovery Action Council, which he appointed after twisters killed about 250 people across the state last April. Bentley said he will immediately implement two of the suggestions, one for using $72 million in federal relief money to building community and individual shelters and safe rooms, and the other urging local governments to develop disaster plans.

Storms could hit the state again Thursday, although not with the ferocity of the system Monday. Weather service meteorologist Mark Linhares said while it was somewhat uncommon to have tornadoes in January, such storms are hardly rare.

The state is so close to the Gulf of Mexico that moist air moves inland year-round, helping create instability and bringing with it the possibility of storms.

"We can have severe weather any month of the year," Linhares said.

___

Associated Press writer Bob Johnson contributed to this report from Montgomery.

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Rare January Tornado Kills Two in Alabama (ContributorNetwork)

The Associated Press reports two people have died in Alabama due to a fast-moving line of severe storms. Officials have seen damage patterns that are concurrent with an EF2 tornado, although that has not been determined by National Weather Service officials at this point. If a tornado did touch down, it is a rare weather phenomenon in January for the U.S.

Tornadoes don't normally form in the winter, yet over the past three years winter time severe storms have made headlines.

Data

The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center states an average of 17 tornadoes struck the U.S. in January over the past three years. There were six in 2009, 30 in 2010 and 16 in 2011. Preliminary data in 2012 indicate there have been 13 possible tornadoes this year as of Jan. 17. No deaths have been reported in the previous three years until the streak was broken this year.

Outbreak of 2008

Fox News reported in early January 2008 that eight people died due to severe storms that struck the Midwest. Heavy flooding swept away three people in Indiana when five inches of rain melted snow that contributed to the massive flooding. A tornado in central Arkansas killed one resident and a separate tornado killed two people in Missouri.

An EF3 tornado hit northern Illinois, the first tornado to hit Illinois in January since 1950. The storm track of the 2008 tornado was 13.2 miles long and about 100 yards wide.

Wisconsin also had a tornado spawned by the same storm system that struck Illinois. It was the first January tornado in Wisconsin since 1967. Two tornadoes formed in southeast Wisconsin as a stationary front helped produce a lot of moisture.

Why January Tornadoes?

If the weather is right, temperatures can rise across the contiguous 48 states in January. South winds and sunny skies are usually needed for such conditions to form ahead of colder temperatures coming from the north and west.

In the 2008 outbreak, tornado warnings and severe weather happened across portions of eight states. Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana and Oklahoma. Cities in several northern states such as New Jersey and New York ahead of the storm front moving through those areas. Cities that had severe weather also saw record high temperatures.

In 2010, a tornado passed over Huntsville, Ala. Southern states are more likely to see winter time tornadoes as temperatures are higher in places like Louisiana, Alabama and Florida. Sometimes warm winds and weather systems in the Gulf of Mexico and tropical Atlantic Ocean can blow up into the U.S. mainland and increase temperatures. Then colder air comes from Canada to cause a sudden temperature drop that can form tornadoes.

William Browning is a research librarian.

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What a SC tornado ripped apart is found again (AP)

By SUSANNE M. SCHAFER, Associated Press Susanne M. Schafer, Associated Press – Sat Dec 17, 1:32 pm ET

ROCK HILL, S.C. – Sharon Courtney came to an old South Carolina schoolhouse on a cold December night to try to find memories of her husband Steve, who was killed last month when a tornado tore their home apart.

Sifting through piles of muddied photos, crushed papers, and mangled tools gathered by volunteers, the 55-year-old church pianist found a tattered piece of paper that was a faded anniversary card sent by her in-laws to celebrate her two-year wedding anniversary in 1978.

"How about that? Isn't that marvelous?" she said, a bit of wonder in her voice, showing the signature she recognized from her late husband's father, who had passed away a month before the storm.

"Now he's in heaven with his dad," Courtney said. "Christmas isn't going to be easy, but we'll get through it."

Courtney's husband was among six killed in three states by a severe weather system that struck the South late last month. It was among the final deadly gasps of a devastating year of tornadoes that killed hundreds in Missouri, Alabama and elsewhere.

In the aftermath of the deadly storms, all sorts of odd lost-and-founds have helped survivors cope and communities rebuild. In Alabama, a Facebook page connected people with personal items flung miles away by April twisters, while workers in Missouri carefully cleaned and sorted 27,000 photos buried or blown away when a tornado devastated Joplin in May.

In South Carolina, Courtney said it was hard to search through the piles of personal items gathered by members of her small, rural community, but it also showed the kindness of strangers.

"We've all become a family," Courtney said of the rescue workers and volunteers gathered at the school house.

The old building became a collection point because it was located next to the Bethesda Volunteer Fire Department, whose firefighters were among the first to respond when the 135 mph tornado hit down the road. An area meteorologist has also used his blog to help people track personal items and explain the physics behind their long journeys.

The funnel cloud touched down over several miles and blew apart eight houses, damaged 20 others, tore metal farm sheds off their foundations and twisted trees like pipe cleaners.

York County Coroner Sabrina Gast, who worked all night to locate the dead and wounded, has since banded with the firefighters and local volunteers to collect personal items and return them to their owners. Tornado victims were invited to peruse the items, organized in paper bags by where they were found.

"We hope they can find something, and get a little bit back of what they lost," says Gast, standing amid the piles turned in over the past three weeks.

Sue Ferrell Clark, 58, showed a pile of dirtied bills, letters and portraits of her grandchildren that she'd collected. Portraits of her elderly parents were intact, still inside a mud-splashed plastic frame.

She laughed at a faded photo from her wedding 25 years ago. "That's my ex-husband," she said with a laugh. Her elderly parents survived the storm under a couch as the storm's winds whipped the roof off their home.

"The Lord was really looking after them," she said. "But I haven't found my laptop yet," she added ruefully.

Firefighter Capt. Tim Mills and his wife Amber used Facebook and put out word through the department's women's auxiliary to organize the school house gathering.

"I'm just hoping that everybody can find something, something to take back, because there's some things they lost they can't never get back," said Mills.

"There's still a lot left," said his wife, 25. "At least everybody who came tonight found some stuff."

As the collection is diminished, it also grows.

Anthony Johnson, 58, of Rock Hill, came by to drop off some torn bits of wedding pictures he'd found in his front yard.

"At first, I didn't know what it was from, and then I realized, the storm!" said Johnson, who lives about three miles away. "It really makes you realize how blessed you are, because with that storm, it could have been you."

Chief meteorologist Brad Panovich of WCNC-TV in Charlotte, more than 20 miles away, has been keeping track of the tornado debris.

His blog displays a picture of a canceled check belonging to Courtney that was found about 25 miles away in Ballantyne, N.C., south of Charlotte, and mailed back to her. She said she was "very pleased" to have gotten it.

"It is common for lightweight materials to be carried long distances after a tornado lifts," Panovich wrote on his blog, noting that some items were found in Tennessee after the tornadoes in Alabama earlier this year.

Tracking such debris has a dual use because it helps scientists understand how storms lift and carry items as they whip back upward in the sky, the meteorologist said.

"Not only does this help reunite people with their lost possessions. It helps us to understand the power of tornados and how the wind and debris they lift behaves after the tornado lifts," Panovich said.

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After fire and tornado, Miss. church is rebuilt (AP)

YAZOO CITY, Miss. – In this quiet little town where the hill country rises up from the pancake-flat Delta farmlands, reminders of the killer tornado are all around. The bent flag poles and broken crosses, snapped trees and abandoned houses, all claim a spot in the landscape now.

Among the vestiges of destruction, a resurrection of sorts has taken shape in Yazoo City since the 2010 storm. The Hillcrest Baptist Church, destroyed first by fire, then by nature, has been rebuilt on a hillside at the edge of town. The members of this small congregation are a determined and faithful lot who consider it nothing short of a miracle.

"A church encompasses a community," Pastor Rayburn Freeman said on a recent morning. "You're not talking about one little building up on a hill; you're talking about a whole community."

The church is planning a dedication ceremony Sunday to celebrate its new building, and perhaps nobody is more thankful to be here for it than longtime member Dale Thrasher.

Thrasher, 61, was the only person in the church on April 24, 2010, a Saturday, when it was hit by a tornado that killed at least 10 people. Thrasher dove under a communion table just moments before the twister ripped the church apart.

He survived with barely a scratch. A hymnal found later in the debris nearby was turned to the song, "Till The Storm Passes By."

"`Mid the crash of the thunder, Precious Lord, hear my cry," the lyrics say. "Keep me safe, till the storm passes by."

You'd be hard pressed to convince Thrasher that was a coincidence, and there's no use saying the small, wood communion table saved his life.

"It wasn't the table that saved me. It was the Lord who saved me," Thrasher said recently while showing off the new brick building. "When I seen those windows busting, I just bowed my head and prayed, `Lord save me.' It was like he put his arms around me."

Hillcrest Baptist Church was founded in 1992 with a congregation of about two dozen people in a town known for blues, catfish and cotton. It was burned in 1999 by an arsonist who was never charged. The church was rebuilt bigger and better.

It stood for years on the hill just off Highway 49, where it was one of the first things people saw when driving into Yazoo City from the south. Then the tornado wiped it away, and like in the passages in the Bible, the believers and doubters came forward.

"Some people around here thought they wouldn't build back, but they were determined," said Yazoo City Mayor McArthur Straughter, who is not a member of the church.

"When something like that happens it makes you wonder how long before your community will be back the way it was. But we have managed to weather the storm, as they say," Straughter said.

The tornado that hit the church left a path of devastation from the Louisiana line to east-central Mississippi, damaging dozens of homes and businesses. At the time, Gov. Haley Barbour, who grew up in Yazoo City, called the scene "utter obliteration."

The congregation has been meeting in a temporary location lent by another church, and attendance fell from the 100 or so who used to show up on Sundays. But there have been a couple of services in the new church while the finishing touches have been put on, and it appears the congregation will reach the levels it was before the storm.

"The Lord has blessed us from the time we started on this building," said longtime member Alton Rivers, a 71-year-old retiree. "One of the greatest blessings my wife and I had was watching them raise the steeple. That was the crowning moment."

The congregation was able to rebuild and are debt free thanks to donations that poured in, including cash sent from Australia and money from a Jewish children's school.

"Just depend on God for everything. He'll take you through the storm and bring you back," Thrasher said. "Now just pray that the Lord is going to fill this building up."

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Joplin tornado death toll revised down to 161 (Reuters)

KANSAS CITY, Mo (Reuters) – The death toll from the May 22 tornado in Joplin, Missouri has been revised down to 161 with the discovery that one assumed victim died of other causes.

The city said in a statement that Kenneth J. Henson, a resident of Ottawa County, Oklahoma, did not die in the tornado. Jasper County Coroner Rob Chappel discovered the error while he was helping other officials compile a list of tornado victims for a six-month memorial service, the city said.

"Through this recent review, we are confident that the current list of 161 is accurate," the city said. The city gave no explanation for the Henson mix-up, and Chappel could not be immediately reached for comment Saturday.

The tornado, one of the deadliest in U.S. history, destroyed some 900 homes and other buildings. The death toll grew over several months as people died of their lingering injuries.

(Editing by Greg McCune)

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Surviving Tornado Storms of the Southeast (ContributorNetwork)

LAGRANGE, Ga. -- A series of tornados blasted through the Southeast yesterday afternoon, killing several people, destroying hundreds of homes and buildings throughout Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. As my fellow professors and college students huddled in the hallway, a similar event happened at the school my wife teaches at and daughter attends, and another where my son goes to pre-kindergarten.

The wisdom of such emergency procedures became clear, as a tornado slammed through the high school in the county immediately south of us, shutting down the place for at least the rest of the week.

As disruptive as yesterday's twisters were, they were nothing compared to the horrific storms of April 28, 2011, where hundreds died across the Southeast in places like Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Calculations I did for Southern Political Report found that if that storm system was classified as a "land hurricane," it would be the third deadliest storm in the U.S. since World War II.

A few weeks earlier than that, I was presenting a paper in Birmingham when the tornado sirens went off. I was flattered that folks moved away from the windows, but stayed to listen to me finish the talk. We later found out that dozens of people died in that Southeast storm system.

Now folks down here are taking things more seriously, like having a plan for where to go. Our kids know to run to the hallway, where we huddled throughout the night of April 28.

But are these plans enough? In the film "Twister," the problem is treated as one of needing an "earlier warning," as if 15 more minutes would make a different. But most Southerners knew the storm was going to hit, hours before it arrived.

Having an emergency plan is nice, but folks down here know where to go to in the house when a warning siren or Weather Channel issues an alert. Yet when a mile-wide tornado slams into Tuscaloosa homes, or the giant twisters reduces homes and hotels to a pile of rubble, there's nowhere to hide.

How is it that what was once called "Tornado Alley," (the Midwest) are seeing just as many tornados, but "Dixie Alley" is seeing twister deaths skyrocket? Grady Dixon of Mississippi State University found that tornados in the Southeast stay on the ground longer. USA Today ran Dixon's story two days before devastating tornado storm system.

There's another problem "Dixie Alley" residents face. Hardly any have storm shelters, while Tornado Alley is rife with them. If the U.S. government wants to help the region, and the economy, they need to get homebuilders to switch to building storm shelters. Otherwise, the region will see more deaths from these powerful twisters.

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Death toll from Joplin tornado reduced to 161 (AP)

JOPLIN, Mo. – Officials say the death toll from Joplin's May 22 tornado has fallen to 161, with the discovery that an Oklahoma man was included by mistake.

The city of Joplin said Friday the Jasper County coroner has determined that 56-year-old Kenneth James Henson did not die of tornado-related causes. Coroner Rob Chappel (CHAP'-uhl) told The Joplin Globe that Henson, initially listed as a Joplin resident, was from the northeastern Oklahoma city of Miami and died there May 28 of natural causes.

Chappel said the mistake was discovered during a review of names for a six-month memorial service being held Nov. 22.

Chappel was the sole designated official in charge of compiling the victims list following the tornado. He did not know how Henson's name had been included.

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Information from: The Joplin Globe, http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_re_us/storytext/us_joplin_tornado_death_toll/43576828/SIG=10s8q01al/*http://www.joplinglobe.com

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Tornado chasers swap storm stories at weather festival (Reuters)

NORMAN, Okla (Reuters) – Here in the heart of Tornado Alley, they give awards for the worst hail damage on vehicles driven by the motley collection of civilians known as "storm chasers."

It's a good-natured nod of respect from the National Weather Center professionals to the mostly amateur ranks of people who crisscross the land following the most violent weather in the country.

Fifty-one chasers showed up in Norman, Oklahoma, over the weekend to reminisce, swap weather war stories and take a deep breath in their "off-season" -- the cool, crisp fall when a tornado is unlikely to rear its head anywhere in North America.

The event was the National Weather Festival, an open-house style event at the 5-story, $69 million National Weather Center building at the University of Oklahoma, where the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) is the primary tenant.

The storm chasers and their vehicles were among the hottest attractions, partly because the year 2011 has been a horrid year filled with recurring media images of tornadoes and their aftermath.

With 549 killed by tornado-related weather, NOAA says it was the fourth deadliest tornado year in United States history (1925 was the worst, with 794 fatalities.)

The Joplin, Missouri, tornado on May 22 was the worst: 162 killed according to local authorities. It was the seventh-deadliest in U.S. history and the worst since modern record-keeping began in 1950, according to NOAA.

'NOT GOOD'

For the chasers who were there, the Joplin twister is not something that evokes an animated spate of story-telling. Instead, they get a bit quiet.

"Joplin was," said Brian DePriest, before pausing, "not good."

"You're never used to it," said the 39-year-old chaser from Springfield, Missouri.

As a group, the storm chasers fall into four subspecies: spotters, students/researchers, professionals and TV chasers.

Yes, it's exciting and at times thrilling, they all report.

There is a general consensus, though, that unless you have your own television show, like Reed Timmers of the "Storm Chasers" program on the Discovery Channel, there's not a great deal of money to be made.

"Most people don't break even," said Denton Sachs, 20, an electrical engineer from Texarkana, Texas, who caught a lot of attention at the Weather Festival with his storm-chasing vehicle: a sleek, black 2011 Dodge Challenger.

Most chasers drive SUVs or pickups, but with an HD camera in front and a remote-control camera on his trunk, Sachs said he can stream live storm video from his Challenger as effectively as someone in an hardier vehicle.

He tries to steer clear of hail damage by keeping a close eye on his radar display.

At the other end of the age and experience spectrum is Mike Weiss, 41, who has been chasing storms for 19 years -- "before it was cool," as he put it.

PUBLIC SERVICE

He doesn't take video or photos and does it simply as a public service with Central Oklahoma REACT Team 6023, he said.

As a storm spotter, he reports what he sees to the National Weather Service and other government agencies.

If there's a misconception about storm chasers, Weiss said, it's that storm chasers are all thrill-seeking daredevils. If you don't know what you're doing, he added, it's a good hobby in which "you can get yourself killed," he added, without a grin.

Janette Bontempo, a 41-year-old homemaker from Sherman, Texas, followed the supercell storm that turned into the tornado that flattened the tiny Oklahoma town of Tuska, killing two on April 14.

"We had to do search and recovery," she said. "Some people will pay to go storm chase and they don't realize there's a human factor to it."

Even so, there was a healthy showing of young people who are new members of the swelling storm-chasing ranks at the National Weather Festival. Many were out-of-state students pursuing meteorology degrees at OU.

Others, like Lawrence R. McEwen, are young people enjoying an expensive yet exciting hobby.

Standing next to his 2009 Ford Escape, McEwen conceded that the two big hail-stone circles in his windshield could be considered badges of honor for his weather passion.

He was more eager, though, to talk about the 30 cameras and seven laptop computers he employs in his chase vehicle, along with the 8,000 hours of storm video he has compiled since the age of 13.

But beyond all the gizmos and technology at his employ, McEwen, a 21-year-old who lives in Moore, Oklahoma, made clear he grasps the potential bottom line of storm-chasing: "So many people have died this year and that has really bothered me."

(Editing by Jerry Norton)

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