In , hundreds of tornados touched down in Alabama killing more than people. Alabama was ground zero for the largest tornado outbreak in American history, when more than twisters gouged paths across the state in late April — killing people. Some of the most intense tornadoes flattened heavily populated areas.
One twister, shown nationally on live TV, tore through downtown Tuscaloosa and went on to destroy parts of Birmingham. Another monster twister, this one an EF-5 with winds stronger than mph, tracked across northern Alabama, killing 78 people, becoming one of the deadliest single tornadoes in modern American history.
According to the Storm Prediction Center, Alabama saw the most tornadoes of any state this year, with In April, a deadly tornado almost a mile wide swept through Joplin, MO killing more than people. With winds greater than mph, that tornado killed nearly people, making it the seventh deadliest in U.
Tornadoes were just one prong of the deadly onslaught of extreme weather in Missouri, as a combination of heavy spring rains and upstream snowmelt sent the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers surging over their banks. This year, it carried When the Army Corps of Engineers essentially blew up the levees to save the small town of Cairo, Illinois, floodwaters inundated around , acres of Missouri farmland.
Not only was NC hit by a deadly tornado in April, but it was one of the first states hit by Hurricane Irene. Credit: NASA.
April was the most active tornado month in U. North Carolina was among the states worst hit. On April 16, multiple tornadoes ripped through Raleigh and nearby towns, leaving a trail of destruction behind them. Thirty-eight people died in a two-day April tornado outbreak that spread through 10 states; 22 were in North Carolina. North Carolina was also one of the first states walloped by Hurricane Irene in August. With its immense mile span, the storm battered the North Carolina coast with rain and driving mph winds for nearly 12 hours.
Half a million people lost power during the storm, and the gusting winds generated waves high enough to demolish piers and damage homes along the coastline.
But how many paid attention? In the social science we get down into the details about false alarms and things like that, but how about a general question I don't know that number. Is it half the people? So there is a certain segment that's just not involved in keeping up with the weather. There just has to be.
He used the March 19 EF3 tornado that hit Jacksonville as an example. How many people in Jacksonville knew the weather was going to be bad on March 19? What did they do? Even if you knew it was bad, what did you do to counter that? Maybe those are some good questions to ask. Are you changing your lifestyle? What went right that day. But what about the things that helped -- things that kept the death toll from being even higher on April 27, ? One was capturing the tornadoes on video, according to Myers.
Social media wasn't quite as pervasive in as it is today, and much of the information relayed to the public was through broadcast meteorologists, many of them severe weather coverage veterans.
Several were able to provide video of powerful tornadoes roaring through cities such as Cullman, Tuscaloosa and the northern suburbs of Birmingham. Those images were powerful tools, Myers said. And that led to another big revelation in that post study: The public wants more than just your word for it that something bad is coming. They want to know, is it going to be near me? Is it coming toward me and when is it going to get to me? And they want secondary confirmation. The videos give them that secondary confirmation," she said.
Is it that bad? Is it a false alarm? That was another big thing was that a lot of people needed that secondary confirmation to realize, hey, even though they told us it was going to be this bad -- it really is this bad and I need to take action.
Another thing that could have played into the need for secondary confirmation was the so-called 'cry wolf' syndrome, or false alarms. And so the public was really kind of desensitized to the warning process," Myers said. And so they've improved their false alarm ratio substantially. New workplaces, new food sources, new medicine--even an entirely new economic system. From April 25 to 28, , a fierce and deadly storm system produced a total of confirmed tornadoes in 21 states from Texas to New York, and even isolated tornadoes in Canada.
Alabama was struck particularly hard. These April tornadoes killed at least people people in the Southeast, Midwest, and Northeast.
Then—on May 22, —the deadliest single tornado since struck Joplin, Missouri, with at least people now confirmed dead and more than 1, people reportedly injured. He explained some of the science that has caused these fierce tornadoes in the U. It had very high wind speeds in it. And it was moving over tornado alley , where we tend to get cold, dry air from Canada colliding with warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico. The combination of those contrasting air masses, and then the very powerful jet stream, was just the perfect storm of conditions to make a lot of tornadoes.
Instability, explains Masters, is what happens when large masses of cold air from Canada high in the atmosphere create updrafts, which can be up to 10 miles high. Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American.
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