Tornados are in the news again. This time it’s the Northeast that’s getting the worst of it. Just this month, four people were killed in upstate New York as a twister whipped through the small town of Smithfield.
NBC news is calling it the “state’s second deadliest” tornado since the 1950s—truly off the charts for a state that typically sees smaller category tornados and rarely sustains this kind of damage from them.
According to the AP, Smithfield’s tornados were actually part of a larger storm system battering the region and leaving more than 350,000 homes without power. You can see a slideshow of the damage to New York and even some parts of Pennsylvania
here.
Apparently, storm and tornado season varies from region to region, with twisters showing up most frequently in the spring down South, and moving up to the Midwest and Northeast through the summer. I’ll let the smart people at weather.com explain why. The same smart people also have a super cool map of tornado risk by month and region, in case you want to check on your area or nail down vacation plans.
Anyhow, we’re keeping a weather eye on the storms with NOAA’s
Storm Prediction Center, reading back up on
“Preparing for a Tornado,” and hoping everyone’s staying safe!
--Stacey
