Storm-spawned tornadoes have ravaged several mid-west and southern states since Sunday, April 27, taking at least 35 lives, injuring hundreds, and destroying property in dozens of towns across Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, Iowa and Mississippi. “It makes you just take a breath now,” said tornado survivor Kenneth Billingsley of Mississippi. “It makes you pay attention to life.”A first assessment by the government totaled 11 tornadoes that blasted through the Midwest, and the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center said that at least 25 twisters hit the South on Monday, April 28. A gas station in Tupelo, Mississippi was flattened to the ground and a fire station in Kimberly, Alabama was unable to free the fire trucks in order to aid the town, reported to AP.Yury Zavala, a recent graduate in psychology from Alabama, lived in the tornado-prone state for 13 years. In April of 2011, tornadoes killed more than 250 people in Alabama. Zavala said that residents can take precautions to protect themselves, like getting in underground shelters or bathtubs, but there is nothing to do to protect homes or buildings. “The weather has been off. It’s been cold one day and warm the next. That’s when you know it’s tornado season. When it’s raining and then stops suddenly you know a tornado is coming, maybe 10 minutes away.” The deadly tornadoes were a product of weather patterns from across the nation as cool air from California met with warm, damp air from the Gulf of Mexico. The mix of colliding warm and cold weather is what creates a tornado.Twisters turn the sky dark, according to Jillann Mackey, a junior in biology from Arizona. She saw a tornado while she was in Utah, a more unusual location for a twister. “I looked out the window and saw it coming straight towards the house. Then it suddenly changed direction. The sky was as dark as I had ever seen it.”The storm system has moved south, leaving the more northern states of Mississippi and Alabama with heaps of rubble to clean up, and families with lives to reassemble. The southern states still remain on active alert for more twisters.
Writer: Samone Isom ~ Multimedia Journalist
