Tornadoes stalked the Midwest once again last night. At least 17 twisters were reported across five states, with the greatest concentration in Oklahoma and around Oklahoma City in particular. So far, 5 people had been reported killed and 71 injured. There has been extensive property damage both from high winds and from the flooding that accompanied the storms. While tornadoes touched down in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Indiana and Illinois, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma City in particular, took the brunt of the storms.
read more

As we recently warned, tornadoes can strike without warning: Now a huge tornado has hit Springfield, Massachusetts. Sacramento, California has been hit too. Why can’t we forecast these terrible storms so that people can take shelter? There have been plenty of tornadoes this year, but for 60 years, 1953 was the deadliest tornado year on record. Now that record of 519 fatalities has finally been beaten by more than 520 recorded so far this year. In 1953, a Nebraska family was calmly eating supper one minute, then the next minute all 10 of them were dead.read more

Global warming doesn’t just lead to hotter weather?it leads to weather extremes. One example of this is that the past October set a record for the number of tornadoes worldwide.

In LiveScience.com, Andrea Thompson reports that in October there were 87 tornadoes in a 3-day period, from October 17 through 19. This broke the previous record of 63 tornadoes from oct. 23-27 that was set 10 years ago, in 1997.

Art credit: gimp-savvy.com
read more

According to NOAA, the number of tornadoes in 2004 set arecord. In September, the U.S. usually has an average of 47tornadoes, but this year we had 247!

We?d better build tornado shelters?or learn toleave ourbodies!

NOTE: This news story, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.read more