Eleven straight days of tornadoes have US approaching 'uncharted territory'

Debris surrounds the wreckage of a building in the area of Dayton, Ohio. Photo / Andrew Spear, The New York Times

The windows on Eddie Whitehead's home were blown out. Mangled metal rested in his front yard Tuesday. The night before, the winds of one of the tornadoes that screeched and roared across Ohio had slammed his back door open and shut.

And yet he was among the Dayton area's faintly fortunate: On Tuesday, his house still stood, sandwiched between two that no longer did, crippled amid a stretch of severe weather that has tormented communities from the Rocky Mountains to the Mid-Atlantic.

"I was watching the news and was taking the news of a tornado with a grain of salt until I heard the wind," Whitehead said as he waited for an insurance adjuster. "Today I'm sitting here in awe."

It was a scene that has played out in state after state this spring. In the last week alone, authorities have linked tornadoes to at least seven deaths and scores of injuries. Federal government weather forecasters logged preliminary reports of more than 500 tornadoes in a 30-day period — a rare figure, if the reports are ultimately verified — after the start of the year proved mercifully quiet.

"From mid-April on, it's just been on a tear," said Patrick Marsh, the warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center. "What has really set us apart has been the last 10 days or so. The last 10 days took us from about normal to well above normal."

Monday, Marsh said, was the 11th consecutive day with at least eight tornado reports, tying the record. The storms have drawn their fuel from two sources: a high-pressure area that pulled the Gulf of Mexico's warm, moist air into the central United States, where it combined with the effects of a trough trapped over the Rockies, which included strong winds.

"We are flirting in uncharted territory," Marsh said of the sustained period of severe weather. "Typically, you'd see a break of a day or two in between these long stretches, but we're just not getting that right now."

Alicia Conley looks out the window of her damaged home, after a tornado swept through the Dayton, Ohio area. Photo / Andrew Spear, The New York Times

Damaged homes and vehicles in Dayton. Photo / Andrew Sear, The New York Times

Forecasters said that even the briefest of reprieves might not come until late this week, after a round of severe weather that they feared could erupt Tuesday afternoon and last into the night, especially in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska.

Climate change is increasingly linked to extreme weather, but limited historical information, especially when compared with temperature data that goes back more than a century, has made it difficult for researchers to determine whether rising temperatures are making tornadoes more common and severe.

Kerry A. Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specialises in hurricanes, noted that the science of the connection between tornadoes and climate change is simply less comprehensive that what researchers have compiled on tropical cyclones.

Dealing with tornadoes and climate change, he said, is "absolutely complicated," and there are relatively few papers that discuss tornadoes and climate because "it's almost impossible to see any signal in the data." What's more, he said, the data of the current generation of radar technology goes back to only about 1990, a shorter period than that for good hurricane data.

The Brumley family moved possessions out of their damaged home while a crew began working on the roof. Photo / Andrew Spear, The New York Times

People walk near a downed power pole and street lamp after a tornado swept through the Dayton, Ohio area. Photo / Andrew Spear, The New York Times

In Ohio on Tuesday, residents and emergency officials were responding to the destruction that happened overnight, when radars glowed with the telltale signatures of violent storms. The worst of the weather unfolded just before midnight in and around Dayton, where authorities reported "significant" damage and trouble with the local water system.

The federal government said Tuesday that its initial reports showed at least 10 tornado touchdowns across six counties, which were left to contend with spotty phone service, blocked streets, boil-water advisories and sporadic evacuations.

Tens of thousands of customers in the region were without electricity Tuesday as emergency workers went door-to-door in some communities in search of victims. Ohio Task Force One, an elite search-and-rescue team, was assigned to work in part of Montgomery County.

Damaged homes and downed trees on a residential street after a tornado swept through the Dayton, Ohio area. Photo / Andrew Spear, The New York Times

A classroom at a school that had its roof torn off and walls knocked over. Photo / Andrew Spear, The New York Times

In Celina, a city of 10,000 people about 60 miles northwest of Dayton, an 81-year-old man was killed when the storm picked up a vehicle and slammed it into his home, said Mike Robbins, the Mercer County emergency management director. He said that at least seven people had been injured, three of them seriously, and that at least 40 homes had been destroyed or seriously damaged by the storm, which the Weather Service rated as at least an EF3 tornado, with winds of 136 mph or higher.

But emergency officials said the low death toll was most likely a result of robust warnings that gave people time to seek shelter.

After sunrise Tuesday, Tammy King, 51, sat on what remained of her front porch, smoking a cigarette and salvaging what she could on her property, where metal had twisted around a tree. Her living room was essentially gone, and across the street, a Frito-Lay distribution center was destroyed.

"We got two alerts on our phones; after the second alert I went to my basement," she said. "As soon as I got there I heard the wind, it sounded like a freight train — the horn of a freight train blowing. If we had not gotten to the basement, we would be gone. The cellphone alerts saved our lives."

A car covered in tree debris. Photo / Andrew Spear, The New York Times

The dire warnings and frantic rushes to safety have taken place across the country in recent weeks as storms have raged and the nation's tornado death toll reached its highest level since 2014. So far this year, tornadoes have been blamed for at least 38 deaths in the United States, including this week's fatality in Ohio. (Most of this year's tornado deaths were in Beauregard, Alabama, where 23 people were killed in early March, but at least eight states have reported tornado fatalities since January 1.)

Marsh noted that the bursts of severe weather followed years of relative calm, at least when it came to tornadoes, after the 2011 storm season, when hundreds of people were killed.

"We've had a very quiet few years," he said. "And when we go back to something closer to normal — even though it's slightly above right now — it just seems so much worse than what we'd expect because our expectations are biased by the recent past."

Written by: Kevin Williams and Alan Blinder

Photographs by: Andrew Spear

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