Ten missing in possible Texas tornado

ABC News: At least 10 adults are unaccounted for after a possible tornado hit the East Texas town of Van, injuring more than two dozen people. Van Zandt County Fire Marshal Chuck Allen said Monday that 26 people were transported to hospitals by emergency personnel. Allen says an unknown number of others went by private vehicle for care after Sunday night's storm.

He had no further details on the 10 missing people in Van, a town of about 2,600 located 70 miles southeast of Dallas. Allen says 30 percent of Van has damage and about 50 people were in a shelter at a church.

The National Weather Service believes at least one tornado hit Van, with damage to be surveyed Monday.

Oncor (ON'-kor) reported nearly 11,000 customers without electricity Monday, including the Van area. Officials say two groups of people in North Texas had to be rescued by helicopters after rising floodwaters left them stranded.

Denton County Deputy Fire Marshal Marc Dodd says a Texas National Guard helicopter airlifted four adults and one infant on Sunday from the roof of their home near the city of Krum.

Dodd says another helicopter rescued two adults near the city of Sanger from the roof of their pickup truck, which video showed was surrounded by rushing water. He says 10 others in the county had to evacuate their homes....

A 2007 tornado in Texas, shot by Bruce Haynie of the National Weather Service

Researchers link smoke from fires to tornado intensity

Gary Galluzo at Iowa Now: Can smoke from fires intensify tornadoes? “Yes,” say University of Iowa researchers, who examined the effects of smoke—resulting from spring agricultural land-clearing fires in Central America—transported across the Gulf of Mexico and encountering tornado conditions already in process in the United States.

The UI study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, examined the smoke impacts on a historic severe weather outbreak that occurred during the afternoon and evening of April 27, 2011. The weather event produced 122 tornadoes, resulted in 313 deaths across the southeastern United States, and is considered the most severe event of its kind since 1950.

The outbreak was caused mainly by environmental conditions leading to a large potential for tornado formation and conducive to supercells, a type of thunderstorm. However, smoke particles intensified these conditions, according to co-lead authors Gregory Carmichael, professor of chemical and biochemical engineering, and Pablo Saide, Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER) postdoctoral fellow.

They say the smoke lowered the base of the clouds and increased wind shear, defined as wind speed variations with respect to altitude. Together, those two conditions increased the likelihood of more severe tornadoes. The effects of smoke on these conditions had not been previously described, and the study found a novel mechanism to explain these interactions.

“These results are of great importance, as it is the first study to show smoke influence on tornado severity in a real case scenario. Also, severe weather prediction centers do not include atmospheric particles and their effects in their models, and we show that they should at least consider it,” says Carmichael....

The satellite image for April 27, 2011 shows the southeastern United States, Central America and the Gulf of Mexico—along with tornado tracks (red solid lines, with the thickest indicating a magnitude 5 tornado, descending to magnitude 1 for the thinnest—for the period April 26-28, 2011. Yellow markers indicate fires, and an iridescent overlay shows particulate matter in the air, with red showing highest amount and purple the lowest. Imagery courtesy of Brad Pierce, NOAA Satellite and Information Service Center for Satellite Applications and Research.

More severe tornado outbreaks may be linked to climate change

Michael Roppolo in CBS News: Climate change may be playing a role in the strength and frequency of tornadoes, a new study suggests. Research published in the journal Climate Dynamics finds that although tornadoes are occurring fewer days per year than they used to, they are forming at greater density and strength. This means that on days when tornadoes do form, there tend to be more of them and they're often more powerful.

...In the past, many scientists dismissed the impact of climate change on tornadoes because tornado occurrences vary so greatly from year to year. The number of tornado days in a year -- days in which at least one tornado occurred -- have declined since the 1970s, with a high of 187 in 1971 and a low of 79 tornado days in 2013. But at the same time, the number of days with multiple tornadoes has risen sharply.

Using data from the Storm Prediction Center, Florida State University geography professor James Elsner and his colleagues studied tornadoes with EF-1 intensity and stronger. Elsner told CBS News that when he first looked at tornado days with at least four tornadoes, he noted no change. However, when he looked at instances with larger numbers of tornadoes in a single day, he found a significant increase.

..."The bottom line is that the risk of big tornado days featuring densely concentrated tornado outbreaks is on the rise," the study states.

The researchers say their findings suggest climate change may be a factor. "These trends represent observational evidence of changes in severe deep moist convection possibly related to our changing climate," they write....

A tornado in Quail, Texas

New research links tornado strength, frequency to climate change

Kathleen Haughney at Florida State 24/7: New research by a Florida State University geography professor shows that climate change may be playing a key role in the strength and frequency of tornadoes hitting the United States.

Published Wednesday in the journal Climate Dynamics, Professor James Elsner writes that though tornadoes are forming fewer days per year, they are forming at a greater density and strength than ever before. So, for example, instead of one or two forming on a given day in an area, there might be three or four occurring.  "We may be less threatened by tornadoes on a day-to-day basis, but when they do come, they come like there's no tomorrow," Elsner said.

Elsner, an expert in climate and weather trends, said in the past, many researchers dismissed the impact of climate change on tornadoes because there was no distinct pattern in the number of tornado days per year. In 1971, there were 187 tornado days, but in 2013 there were only 79 days with tornadoes.

But a deeper dive into the data showed more severity in the types of storms and that more were happening on a given day than in previous years. "I think it’s important for forecasters and the public to know this," Elsner said. "It's a matter of making sure the public is aware that if there is a higher risk of a storm, there may actually be multiple storms in a day."

The United States experiences more tornadoes than any other country, and despite advances in technology and warning systems, they still remain a hazard to residents in storm-prone areas. The 2011 tornado season, for example, had nearly 1,700 storms and killed more than 550 people.

So far, in 2014, there have been 189 storms with a death toll of 43, according to the NOAA/National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center. One bright spot of news in the research, Elsner added, was that the geographic areas impacted most regularly by tornadoes do not appear to be growing...

NOAA image of a tornado near Minco, Oklahoma, date unknown

Building walls to block out deadly tornadoes?

Jenna Iacurci in Nature World News: According to a recent publication in the International Journal of Modern Physics B, one possible solution to the tornadoes that annually wreak havoc in the US's Tornado Alley is to literally build three east-west great walls to block out such environmental threats forever. Professor Rongjia Tao behind the research claims these walls can be built locally at high tornado risk areas to eliminate tornado threats there first, then gradually extended.

Tornado Alley, which is a strip of land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Rocky Mountains, including most American Midwest states, gets its name because that's where the most devastating tornadoes occur each year. In 2013, there were 811 confirmed tornadoes, the majority of them in this region.

Tornado Alley is inside the "zone of mixing," where warm and moist air flowing towards the North clashes with cold air moving towards the South, accoridng to a press release. Such clashes result in violent vortexes, or supercells, which 30 percent of the time result in the deadly tornadoes we witness.

Wind speeds are also an integral part of developing tornadoes, and that's where Tao's wall idea comes in. The Northern China Plain and the Eastern China Plain, for example, are also in the zone of mixing, just like Tornado Alley. However, this region doesn't boast as high a number of tornadoes as in the US's Tornado Alley thank to three east-west mountain ranges, which protect these plains.

While there are no mountains in Tornado Alley to protect it from tornado threats like the Jiang-Huai Hills do, for example, in China, Tao proposes we create mountains of our own. However, there are the Ozarks Mountains and Shawnee Hills, but they are for the most part ineffective at providing any sort of protection, except to a few local areas, since they run from north to south, not east to west....

NOAA image of an occluded mesocyclone tornado

Drones may help predict tornadoes in the future

USA Today: Fourteen minutes is how much time a city or town has between a tornado warning and when a twister touches ground, according to the national average from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

But that warning time could increase to an hour with the help of data from unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly called drones, according to Jamey Jacob, an aerospace and engineering professor at Oklahoma State University.

Two days of violent weather have killed at least 30 people in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee and the storms are forecast to continue. In the future, the information collected by drones could help meteorologists make better tornado forecasts, Jacob said.

Jacob is leading a team of students in designing and developing drones to fly into storms and collect a storm's pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speeds. "Right now, we don't have a really good way in determining which thunderstorms will develop into tornadoes," Jacob told USA TODAY Network. He added, "We're looking for the fingerprint of the tornado."

Oklahoma is in the middle of Tornado Alley. The state had 63 tornadoes last May alone, according to NOAA. As tornado season gears up again, the OSU team is building drones, which will weigh 35 pounds each and be able to fly up to 12 hours, Jacob said....

An F5 tornado in Manitoba, shot by , Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, Justin Hobson (Justin1569 at en.wikipedia), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Twisters bring deaths, carnage to southern US

Wendy M. Welch, Doyle Rice and John Bacon in USA Today: At least 11 people were killed Monday after tornadoes ripped through Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, bringing the death toll from two days of vilent weather across a wide swath of the nation to at least 28. And the carnage may not be over yet, the National Weather Service warned Tuesday.

The massive, slow-moving storm system flattened homes and businesses, uprooted trees and flipped cars across parts of southern and central U.S. The National Weather Service was investigating reports of almost 100 tornadoes -- with more violent weather forecast for Tuesday.

Al least seven deaths were reported in Mississippi on Monday, six of them in and around Louisville. a town of about 6,600 people. State Sen. Giles Ward said he was huddled in a bathroom with his wife, four other family members and their dog Monday night as a tornado destroyed his two-story brick house and turned his son-in-law's SUV upside down onto the patio in Louisville.

"Our family is OK, thank goodness," Ward told The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson. "Our house as well as all the houses in our neighborhood it appears are destroyed. But our family is safe." Later, he texted: "I have never prayed so hard in my life. God is good. All we have lost is stuff."

More than 60 million people from southeastern Michigan to the central Gulf coast to the Carolinas and southern Virginia are at risk of severe storms and tornadoes Tuesday, according to AccuWeather meteorologist Alex Sosnowski....

NOAA stock image of an occluded mesocyclone tornado

At least 15 dead as tornadoes rip through central, southern US

ABC News via Good Morning America: Rescuers sifted through the rubble today looking for survivors after a powerful tornado carved out a path of destruction, flattening homes and businesses and downing power lines.

The death toll was originally set at 17, but it was revised down by two people this afternoon by Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe's office. At least 15 people in the central and southern United States were killed by the storm system, with 14 of the victims in Arkansas.

One trail of storm destruction stretched 30 miles, Arkansas Department of Emergency Management spokesman Brandon Morris said. "Some homes have been completely destroyed, some have severe damage, we have power lines and trees down in those counties, as well," Morris told ABC News.

At least one other person died in Quapaw, a small northeastern city near Oklahoma’s borders with Kansas and Missouri. Ottawa County Emergency Management director Joe Dan Morgan said Quapaw, which has about 900 residents, was heavily damaged by the tornado.

"Looks like about half of town got extensive damage as well as the fire department," Morgan said. The violent storm destroyed entire neighborhoods within minutes, slicing an 80-mile path across the region....

NOAA's 2014 tornado prediction

At least two killed as storms tear through Arkansas, Mississippi

Reuters: At least two people were killed as wild storms and suspected tornadoes tore through parts of Mississippi and Arkansas on Saturday, injuring several others, damaging homes and sweeping trucks off a highway, authorities said.

Two adults died when the car they were driving in struck a fallen tree in the road in Jasper County, Mississippi, county coroner Randy Graham told Reuters.

Local television reports said a man was killed in Coahoma County when his mobile home blew over in high winds, but authorities could not be reached for confirmation early on Sunday.

Widespread damage from the storm system was also reported near Dermott, Arkansas, in the southeast corner of the state, where five homes were badly damaged, 15 suffered minor damage and four trucks were blown off a highway, said National Weather Service meteorologist David Cox in Jackson, Mississippi. Two people were injured, he said….

FEMA photo of damage from a 2001 tornado near the Arkansas-Mississippi border

Tornadoes rip through Midwest, killing 6 and devastating neighborhoods

Ted Rowlands, Holly Yan and Michael Pearson in CNN: Hundreds of thousands of people were without power and hundreds were without homes across the Midwest on Monday after powerful storms wreaked havoc in three states. The worst damage appeared to be in Illinois, where six people died.

Gov. Pat Quinn declared seven counties a state disaster area, including Tazewell County, where a tornado left parts of Washington, Illinois, in ruins. "Devastation. Sadness. People that lost everything," is how Washington Mayor Gary Manier described the scene to CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day."

...Another tornado in Washington County, Illinois, east of St. Louis, left a path of debris that stretched more than three miles, according to a preliminary survey by the National Weather Service.

While the bulk of the storm had moved offshore into the Atlantic Ocean and the threat of severe weather Monday was small, damaging wind gusts of up to 40 mph were still possible in parts of the Northeast, CNN meteorologist Indra Petersons said Monday morning. In the Great Lakes region, 50 mph gusts were possible, she said.

The storm struck Washington around 11 a.m. Sunday, when many of the town's 10,000 residents were at church. The timing may have been a blessing: Dozens of homes were destroyed, but only one person is known to have died in Washington, a city of 10,000 just west of Peoria, Illinois.

"It was complete destruction," resident CNN iReporter Anthony Khoury, who filmed the tornado tearing through his neighborhood, said Sunday. "There are people in the streets crying."...

A Category F5 tornado (upgraded from initial estimate of F4) viewed from the southeast as it approached Elie, Manitoba on Friday, June 22nd, 2007. Shot by Justin Hobson (Justin1569 at en.wikipedia), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

'Dangerous' storms in Midwest; Tornadoes hit Illinois

USA Today: Weather officials are urging Midwestern residents to be prepared as a powerful, rapidly moving storm system pounds the region Sunday. National Weather Service officials confirmed several tornadoes touched down in Illinois, including one near East Peoria in central Illinois. No immediate injuries have been reported. Photos from the area showed devastating damage, however.

"This is a very dangerous situation," Russell Schneider, director of the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center, told the Associated Press. "Approximately 53 million in 10 states are at significant risk for thunderstorms and tornadoes."

The Weather Channel says major cities including Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Nashville, and Louisville, Ky., are at the highest risk for severe weather. The cities where the threat of tornadoes is highest include Chicago and Indianapolis, AccuWeather reports.

The NFL game between the Baltimore Ravens and Chicago Bears at Soldier Field was suspended due to the threat of severe weather. Earlier Sunday, the National Weather Service issued a "high risk" alert of severe weather for eastern Illinois, Indiana, western Ohio and far southwest lower Michigan, with conditions favorable for a tornado outbreak and widespread damaging winds. About 18 million people live within the "high risk" area.

The agency says strong winds and atmospheric instability are expected to sweep across the central Plains during the day before pushing into the Mid-Atlantic states and northeast by evening. The potential for strong and long-track tornadoes will center on the Ohio Valley and adjacent Midwestern states....

A 2004 tornado in Illinois, from NOAA

Pacific Ocean temperature influences tornado activity in United States

Jerett Rion in the University of Missouri News Bureau: Meteorologists often use information about warm and cold fronts to determine whether a tornado will occur in a particular area. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found that the temperature of the Pacific Ocean could help scientists predict the type and location of tornado activity in the U.S.

Laurel McCoy, an atmospheric science graduate student at the MU School of Natural Resources, and Tony Lupo, professor and chair of atmospheric science in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, surveyed 56,457 tornado-like events from 1950 to 2011. They found that when surface sea temperatures were warmer than average, the U.S. experienced 20.3 percent more tornados that were rated EF-2 to EF-5 on the Enhanced Fuijta (EF) scale. (The EF scale rates the strength of tornados based on the damage they cause. The scale has six category rankings from zero to five.)

McCoy and Lupo found that the tornados that occurred when surface sea temperatures were above average were usually located to the west and north of tornado alley, an area in the Midwestern part of the U.S. that experiences more tornados than any other area. McCoy also found that when sea surface temperatures were cooler, more tornadoes tracked from southern states, like Alabama, into Tennessee, Illinois and Indiana.

“Differences in sea temperatures influence the route of the jet stream as it passes over the Pacific and, eventually, to the United States,” McCoy said. “Tornado-producing storms usually are triggered by, and will follow, the jet stream. This helps explain why we found a rise in the number of tornados and a change in their location when sea temperatures fluctuated.”

In the study, McCoy and Lupo examined the relationship between tornadoes and a climate phenomenon called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). PDO phases, which were discovered in the mid-1990s, are long-term temperature trends that can last up to 30 years. According to NASA scientists, the current PDO phase has just entered into a “cool” state.

...In 2011, more than 550 deaths occurred as a result of tornadoes, resulting in more than $28 billion in property damage, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. McCoy says that with her findings, officials may be able to save lives in the future....

From NOAA, a 1999 tornado near Minco, Oklahoma

9 dead after tornadoes, floods strike Oklahoma

Robin Webb and Michael Winter in USA Today: Severe flooding was the big issue Saturday as officials began surveying damage from tornadoes that hit the Oklahoma City metro area Friday, killing 9 and injuring more than 100 people.

The storm, the second fatal one to strike the region in 11 days, spawned several tornadoes, toppled cars and left commuters trapped on an interstate highway during Friday's evening rush. Law enforcement officers and Red Cross workers headed to hard-hit areas after dawn to assess the damage.

The storm also brought heavy rain and hail. Floodwaters topped 4 feet in Oklahoma City early Saturday and were expected to rise as flash flooding continued in parts of the state. Across east and central Oklahoma, repeated rounds of thunderstorms have produced between 4 to 7 inches of rain since midnight Saturday.

Some highways were closed because of downed power lines. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission reported more than 91,800 power outages related to the storms as of Saturday afternoon...

A May 21 image of the damage from a recent Oklahoma tornado, shot by Oklahoma National Guard, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Damage checks begin after deadly Midwest twisters

Sean Murphy in ABC News: Emergency officials set out Saturday morning to see how much damage a violent burst of thunderstorms and tornadoes caused as it swept across the Midwest overnight, killing at least five and injuring dozens.

The storm toppled cars and left commuters trapped on an interstate highway as it bore down during Friday's evening rush hour near Oklahoma City. The National Weather Service reported "several" tornadoes rolled in from the prairie, terrifying towns along their paths.

The storms brought another tense day for a region still reeling from the recent top-of-the-scale EF5 tornado that struck the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore on May 20, killing 24 and decimating neighborhoods. Many said they took severe weather warnings issued during the day Friday seriously.

...Storm chasers with cameras in their cars transmitted video showing a number of funnels dropping from the supercell thunderstorm as it passed south of El Reno and into Oklahoma City just south of downtown. As the cell advanced, police urged motorists to leave I-40 and seek a safe place.

Violent weather also moved through the St. Louis area. Early aerial images of the storm's damage showed homes with porches ripped away, roofs torn off and piles of splintered wood scattered across the ground for blocks. Officials in St. Charles County also reported that local schools suffered some damage.

...Meteorologists had warned about particularly nasty weather Friday but said the storm's fury didn't match that of the tornado that struck Moore. The Friday storm, however, brought with it much more severe flooding. It dumped around 8 inches of rain on Oklahoma City in the span of a few hours and made the tornado difficult to spot for motorists trying to beat it home, said Bruce Thoren, a meteorologist with National Weather Service in Norman....

The Moore, Oklahoma tornado on May 20, 2013, shot by Ks0stm, der the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Tornado, flood watches for mid-US after 9 injured by twisters

John Newland in NBC News: Severe thunderstorms packing high winds, heavy rains, large hail and possibly tornadoes threatened much of Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma on Friday, a day after tornadoes in the two states injured nine people.

Tornado watches were in effect Friday morning across much of Arkansas, extending into southern Missouri and eastern Oklahoma, according to the National Weather Service. Strong storms with potential to produce large hail were simultaneously forming to the north, in northeastern Kansas and northwestern Missouri, the weather service said.

A slight risk of severe thunderstorms extended from northern Texas to the Great Lakes in a 300,000-square-mile swath home to 42 million people and major cities including Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee and Indianapolis, the service said.

On Thursday, two tornadoes were confirmed in Oklahoma and a third struck in Arkansas, with it and accompanying storms injuring nine people, according to weather.com, which said two people were injured in Rogers, Ark., from a lightning strike.

Because the storms mostly struck after dark, damage had not been fully assessed. Many more severe storms were reported, however. The weather service logged 16 reports of tornadoes in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Illinois and said a house was reported to have been destroyed, injuring two people, in Oden, Ark. Three people were reported injured in Pike County, Ark., where a mobile home was destroyed and at least three houses were damaged....

Category F5 tornado (upgraded from initial estimate of F4) viewed from the southeast as it approached Elie, Manitoba on Friday, June 22nd, 2007. Shot by Justin Hobson (Justin1569 at en.wikipedia), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Oklahoma tornado spread destruction like a 'two-mile-wide lawnmower blade'

Gary Tuchman and Holly Yan in CNN: Even for a city toughened by disaster, Moore has never seen this kind of devastation. A massive, howling tornado pulverized a vast swath of the Oklahoma City suburbs Monday, chewing up homes and businesses, and severely damaging a hospital and two elementary schools.

The storm carved a trail through the area as much as two miles wide and 22 miles long, officials said. The storm killed dozens, but amid the confusion of search and rescue efforts, a precise death toll was hard to come by. Hundreds of people were injured.

Firefighters, police, National Guard members and volunteers worked by flashlight overnight and into Tuesday morning, crawling across piles of debris in a determined search for survivors and victims. Air National Guard members brought in thermal imaging equipment to aid in the work.

Complicating their efforts: downed power lines, hissing natural gas pipes and so much debris blocking roads it was difficult to bring in heavy equipment to help.

Still, more than 100 people had been pulled from the rubble alive since Monday afternoon, the state Highway Patrol said. Early Tuesday, authorities asked news crews to move satellite trucks from the scene because the idling engines were making it difficult for rescuers to listen for the faint sounds of survivors beneath the rubble....

The Moore, Oklahoma tornado on May 20, 2013, shot by Ks0stm, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Fungus responsible for 5 deaths in the wake of massive tornado

Intern Daily via SPX: A fast growing, flesh-eating fungus killed 5 people following a massive tornado that devastated Joplin, Mo., according to two new studies based on genomic sequencing by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Health officials should be aware of infections caused by the fungus Apophysomyces, according to the studies, which tracked 13 people infected by the pathogen during the Class EF-5 tornado - the most powerful category - whose 200-plus mph winds plowed through Joplin on May 22, 2011, initially killing 160 and injuring more than 1,000.

The common fungus - which lives in soil, wood or water - usually has no effect on people. But once it is introduced deep into the body through a blunt trauma puncture wound, it can grow quickly if the proper medical response is not immediate, the studies said. Five of the 13 people infected through injuries suffered during the Joplin tornado died within two weeks.

"Increased awareness of fungi as a cause of necrotizing soft-tissue infections after a natural disaster is warranted ... since early treatment may improve outcomes," concluded one study published Dec. 6 in The New England Journal of Medicine....

Damage from the 2011 tornado in Joplin, Missouri. Shot by KOMUnews, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

‘When the sirens were silent’ – an important read for learning from the Joplin tornado disaster

Jason Samenow in the Washington Post: One of the worst tornadoes of the modern era devastated the city of Joplin a year ago, killing 161 people and leaving vast destruction that produced $3 billion in damages. Little could’ve been done to avoid the catastrophic economic losses, given the intensity of the tornado, at the very top of the scale (EF-5). But Mike Smith, in his new book, “When the sirens were silent,” makes a compelling argument that the people of Joplin were let down.

Smith, senior vice president at AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions, acknowledges the historic intensity of the tornado meant some loss of life was inevitable, but contends two interrelated factors worsened the human toll:

• The tornado siren system was flawed and, on that day, was exposed
• The National Weather Service didn’t have its finest day

The book, a quick read, is a stirring call to action to improve tornado warning communication in this country. ... His comments on the inconsistencies and flaws in sounding tornado sirens are most alarming. The problems he says, are systemic, and not limited to Joplin.

The basic problem, Smith says, it that sirens are sounded too often in most places. Sometimes they sound in an entire county for a warning that covers just a sliver of it; sometimes for other thunderstorm phenomena like large hail and/or strong straight-line winds; and sometimes for false alarm warnings – warnings for tornadoes that were incorrectly detected....

FEMA contractors needed in Midwest following 100+ tornadoes in 24 hours over weekend

My San Antonio via PR Web: FEMA contractors are needed after over 100 tornadoes ravaged the Midwest in only 24 hours over the past weekend, according to the New York Times. Although the current death toll is low due to concentration in rural areas and early warnings from officials, conditions for severe weather in the region are still ripe throughout the week and FEMA is standing ready to assist and support affected communities.

Six fatalities have been confirmed in Woodward, OK, as well as 29 injuries, due to an EF3 tornado. A State of Emergency has been declared by the Governor of Oklahoma in 12 counties. Thousands are currently without power in both OK and KS. 75% of Thurman IA was destroyed by an EF2 tornado whose path stretched 10 miles long. The recent string of tornadoes comes only just over a month after another devastating storm rocked the Midwest and South with deadly and destructive tornadoes.

To fulfill its emergency response and support mission, FEMA relies heavily on contractors from the private sector to provide services and assist affected communities. While there is an immediate need for debris removal and construction contractors, FEMA has a need for products and services in virtually all industries. With tornado season off to a prolific start and hurricane season quickly approaching, contractors nationwide should begin preparing for future contracting demands by checking their registration status....

Sorry I made a mess, dude. A NOAA shot of an April 12, 2012 tornado in Marquette, Kansas

April is the cruelest month

Dana Coulter in Terra Daily via NASA Science News: You might agree if you live in the southeastern United States. Last April, a historic outburst of 202 tornadoes turned broad swaths of that part of the country into a disaster zone. "The event of April 27th and 28th 2011 was the costliest convective storm in U.S. history," said Kevin Knupp, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. And he doesn't just mean costly in terms of property damage - 316 people lost their lives.

Of the 202 twisters that day, 62 tore through Alabama, where Knupp works. Ten of them were ranked EF 4 and 5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. Three tornadoes churned paths more than 120 miles long, and a large number of the twisters cut swaths more than a half mile wide.

Knupp saw the results first-hand, and he's been studying them ever since. Aided by a team of graduate students and colleagues, he's sifted through gigabytes of data1 collected by NASA and NOAA satellites and local ground sensors. A year later, they have drawn some interesting conclusions.

One discovery was how rapidly an EF-5 spun up near the small town of Hackleburg, Alabama. "The Hackleburg storm got its act together really quickly," says Knupp. This particular twister formed only 50 minutes after the underlying thunderstorm appeared. For comparison, the average time for tornado formation is 2 hours. The twister blasted through north Alabama with winds over 200 mph, killing 72 people.

Knupp's team believes that something called a "thermal boundary" set the stage for the birth of the killer. Cool, moist air on one side of the boundary formed a low cloud base -"kind of like a wall," he explains. Warm air from the storm ran into the wall and swept upward. Updrafts are a key ingredient of tornadoes. In this case, updrafts as swift as 75 feet per second were recorded.

...Could local topography have attracted the twisters? There does appear to be a link between the shape of the landscape and the path of these tornadoes....

Damage from an EF-5 tornado which struck the town of Phil Campbell, Alabama during the April 27, 2011 tornado outbreak. From the National Weather Service