Forecasts, TV, luck ease tornado risk in Okla.
Associated Press
PIEDMONT, Okla.
When three tornadoes marched toward Oklahoma City and its suburbs, thousands of people in the path benefited from good forecasts, luck and live television to avoid the kind of catastrophe that befell Tuscaloosa, Ala., and Joplin, Mo.
Although at least 15 people died in the latest round of violent weather, schools and offices closed early, giving many families plenty of time to take shelter. And even stragglers were able to get to safety at the last minute because TV forecasters narrated the twisters’ every turn.
“We live in Oklahoma, and we don’t mess around,” Lori Jenkins of Guthrie said after emerging from a neighbor’s storm shelter to find her carport crumpled and her home damaged.
The people of Oklahoma City, which has been struck by more tornadoes than any other U.S. city, knew the storms were coming. Anxiety was perhaps running higher than usual after last month’s twister outbreak in the South that killed more than 300 people and a Sunday storm that killed at least 125 in Joplin, Mo.
The Oklahoma twisters proved to be weaker than the other tornadoes. But the minute-by-minute accounts of the developing weather helped thousands of people stay abreast of the danger.
Television helicopters broadcast live footage while the system approached the metropolitan area of 1.2 million people — calling out to specific communities such as Piedmont to “Take cover now!”
In Joplin, the city manager said Wednesday that 125 people had died in the storm, raising by three the toll of the nation’s deadliest single tornado since 1950. He said more than 900 people had been injured.
Powerful storms roared through middle America again Wednesday, with weak tornadoes touching down in isolated spots and severe thunderstorms threatening such strikes in several states.
The National Weather Service issued tornado watches and a series of warnings in a dozen states, stretching northwest from Texas though the Mississippi River valley to Ohio.
“Everybody’s working as fast and furious as possible,” said Beverly Poole, the chief meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s office in Paducah, Ky., which covers southeastern Missouri and southern Illinois. “This is just a wild ride.”
There were no immediate reports of deaths from the new round of storms, but authorities in southern Indiana reported several injuries when a tornado touched down along U.S. 50 east of Bedford.