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Tornado Wrap-up
Fri Dec 05, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
"Seven Days in May" was a popular movie in the Cold War era. It is also a fitting title for
this year's tornado season, as most of the mayhem in 2003 took place over a single week, from
May 4 to May 10. Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook.
A total of 403 tornadoes were reported that week. That's by far the most ever charted in a
seven-day period. Forty lives were lost. The most severe came at the beginning, on May 4,
with an outbreak stretching from eastern Kansas and southwest Missouri across to Tennessee.
Oklahomans might have thought they were in a bad remake of Twister. Back in 1999, the
nation's most expensive tornado ever inflicted more than a billion dollars in damage to
Oklahoma City and its suburb, Moore. This year, on May 8, another tornado tracked through
Moore, just blocks away from the 1999 damage path. The old and new swaths actually crossed
for a bit, and some homes rebuilt after 1999 were damaged yet again.
This year's storms cost nearly a half billion dollars, but thanks to good warnings, not a
single person was killed. Just like Hollywood, though, Nature didn't waste any time in
producing a sequel. On the very next day, May 9, a strong tornado hit the north side of
Oklahoma City. This time, the worst punch landed on the outskirts of town, so the damage and
injuries were minimal. All told, it was one of the nation's busiest tornado years on record,
but somehow it didn't seem like it. Maybe that's because close to a third of all this year's
twisters happened on just seven days in May.
Meteorologist Bob Henson sent us today's story. Our show is produced with help from The
National Science Foundation, and Subaru, Driven by What's Inside.
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