Year of the tornado

Josh Mankiewicz Correspondent • Profile

The river waters coursing through the Midwest in June were higher than they've been in 15 years.

Water is being rationed in the South, where a yearlong drought has cost billions in agricultural losses.

And it seems like every season is fire season in the West as dry hot weather has triggered fires like this.

But the deadliest weather this year?

Tornadoes.

Tornadoes sent trucks airborne in Alabama, carved a rare path of destruction through downtown Atlanta, flattened towns in Iowa, and killed more than 115. The number dead is 118 people so far this year, as of June 22. That's more than any year since 1998. And the tornadoes are still coming.

Bill Karins: And we've had a lotta strong, violent tornadoes. That's what's made this tornado season special.

NBC Weather Plus Chief Meteorologist, Bill Karins.

Bill Karins: The record year for tornadoes is 2004. Are we gonna top that year? Well, we're on pace for that.

As of June 22, the exact total is 1,369. So far, there have been more than 1,300 tornadoes spotted in 36 states, and many of them have been big -- and deadly. Up until recently, the death toll had been going down.

Bill Karins: So, we were thinking the Doppler radars are better than ever. The warnings are better than ever. We're doing a good job. We're helping to save lives. And all of a sudden, this year, the death toll's way up and now we're scratching our heads once again and wondering: Are our warnings good enough?

So what's going on? Why are tornadoes this year so frequent and so deadly? There's no one answer. And the answers we have don't explain everything.

In part, it could be bad luck -- more tornadoes hitting in places where people live, rather than in the middle of a dusty, deserted plain. But there's more to it than that.

First, you need to understand something about what causes a tornado outbreak.

Bill Karins: This one was in the beginning of June, where 45 tornadoes touched down right in the heart of tornado alley. We had the perfect setup, and this is classic. Hot, humid air from the Gulf; cool, dry air coming out of the Rockies. The warm air rises quickly. The explosive thunderstorms that produce those 45 tornadoes right in the heart of the country.

The heart of tornado season is April to June but this year those conditions came months earlier.

(Cell phone) "It was load and crazy and I was praying"

It was a deadly tornado that you may not even remember unless you were in it, on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5. That storm killed more than 50 people.

Bill Karins: Over the past three years, we only averaged 25 tornadoes during the month of February. This year, we had over 230 tornadoes.

One of the reasons? A weather pattern called La Nina, cooling of the waters in the Pacific Ocean.

Bill Karins: The effects of the cooler water are mostly found in the southeast when we talk about tornadoes. It makes the jet stream unusually strong early, February and into March. And we can get a lot of sever weather here in the southeast.

But could there be another reason why the tally of deadly twisters is so high this year? What about global warming?

Bill Karins: The global warming question's the hardest for me and probably every other meteorologist; the science just isn't quite there yet to make the connection to global warming, which is huge, to such a small event as one single tornado.

One last thing you should know about tornadoes--they're rated on a scale of one to five.

Bill Karins: EF-1 means it's a weaker tornado. Probably maybe can knock a roof off or some branches down on a tree. An EF-5 tornado is the strongest, most destructive force that any weather phenomenon can bring.

Jim Gardner: It’s gone, it’s leveled there’s nothing here.

Winds above 200 miles per hour.

We've had two EF-5 tornadoes in the last year--after having only one in the last ten years.

So if this keeps up, will we eventually see killer tornadoes like the one that ravages downtown Los Angeles in the global-warming thriller, "The Day After Tomorrow"?

Bill Karins: The general rule, we've had tornadoes in all 50 states. And tornadoes can pretty much happen with the right conditions anywhere. Are we gonna see an EF-5 heading through a big city like L.A. like you see in the movies sometimes? I'd bet a significant amount of change that that will never happen.

Tonight, you're going to hear about four deadly tornadoes that did happen—and hear some incredible stories from some of the people who survived them.

There was a violent twister that trashed a town in northern Colorado, where they almost never get them.

A killer twister that swooped down on a troop of Boy Scouts in western Iowa.

That category-5 monster storm that blasted through the little town of Parkersburg, Iowa.

And the tornado that cut a 120-mile swath of destruction through Arkansas and Tennessee on Super Tuesday.

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