Bugg Stories vol. 5

pearl this is all things considered i'm robert siegel and i'm linda worthheimer people in this at the start cleaning up in yet another round of severe storms yesterday tornadoes touched down in tennessee arkansas kentucky and georgia at least eleven people were killed more than a hundred were injured and some three hundred buildings were damaged and they are as adam hochberg reports yesterday's storm was the fifth major one day hit the south since mid february and had left a path of destruction across four states the worst damage was in tennessee or six people were killed and where downtown nashville was devastated clinton hunch was at his downtown home late yesterday afternoon when the funnel cloud hit he'd covered about ago no one of an untold political if we voted to uphold the bill came up again on a whole

lot of that was a little one at least three hundred nashville buildings were damaged including some of the city's landmarks copper was ripped off the roof of the state capital windows were blown out of high rises and construction material was tossed about the new football stadium being built for the tennessee oilers at one downtown hotel a glass enclosed pedestrian bridge was left dangling above the sidewalk downtown nashville was closed today as crews began cleaning up and mayor phil bredesen says it will take many days before things get back to normal there are in a window they're halfway out of the plane i have one building the other one that i think that there will be the corner room where they could not they are blown out in one of those off while to get back into this afternoon vice president al gore toward the tennessee tornado damage and what has become a familiar task lately for him and for president clinton talking with residents of his home state core pledged federal support for the cleanup

process and praise tennesseans for the way they've responded to the emergency somebody with telling me right there in the downtown area that it's all strangers shaking hands hugging each other just they're not an expression of really an end of solidarity and with one another's human beings evolve something as powerful and something that strong thumb through it really puts the rest of it into perspective among the victims of the storm were to west tennessee residents who were inside a mobile home when the tornado struck and a woman in the chattanooga area who was in a log home collapsed the same line of storms is being blamed for a tornado in northeast arkansas yesterday that killed two young children and for a series of funnel clouds in kentucky that left three people dead kentucky emergency management spokesman dan armstrong says in addition to the tornadoes his state also is dealing with flooding and mudslides caused by the storm and he says some parts of western kentucky were hit by hail storms as large as baseball's if you were in the yard green wood chopping better in bowling green looking at the

cars we have to make more than three hundred cars were literally ruined my that it delayed way to a whole parking lot of cars at western kentucky university and bowling green classes were canceled today because the hail damage the roofs of campus buildings armstrong says thousands of kentucky and jermaine without electricity and damaging the state is estimated in the millions of dollars with this latest round of storms the death toll from tornados in the south this year has topped one hundred and forecasters say the bulk of the spring severe weather season still lies ahead adam hochberg npr news raleigh north carolina the death toll from yesterday's storms has increased the number of tornado fatalities this year to at least one hundred third team that makes nineteen ninety eight of the deadliest year for tornadoes since nineteen eighty four and the tornado season isn't even have over meteorologist blamed this year's high fatality rate partly on el nino and partly on bad luck and be as david baron has this report what's made the nineteen ninety a tornado season on

usual isn't so much the number of tornadoes though there have been somewhat more than average and it isn't their strength though some storms have been extremely strong it's will they have happened it had been so different and that has caused the problems before this year meteorologist fred gadomski of penn state university says the ingredients that make tornadoes in the late winter and spring usually come together in the south central united states in texas oklahoma and kansas known as tornado alley the ingredient that normally make tornado alley tornado prone have been shifted a little bit farther east on the average a little bit farther south on the average this shift has been due in part to el nino which pushed the weather steering jet stream farther east and self that's key says the result has been few were tornados on the sparsely populated planes and more tornadoes in the southeast where there are more people as you make a tornado tank into a deadly populated area a probability going up but they will produce

manager a county still no one can predict exactly where a tornado will strike carried rice of the national storm prediction center in norman oklahoma says whether any individual tornado touches down on the farm or a trailer park a leak or cd is a matter of luck and the country has experienced a string of rotten luck even if you look at ten to flee for example i have a lot of open space and then faded love open space from alabama that we're the tornado plowed through birmingham where the tornado plowed through nashville and they get things like the tornadoes are hitting at the wrong place with the weakening of el nino meteorologist expect a shift of tornadoes back toward the plain states later this spring but grace says people in the southeast can expect more severe thunderstorms and possibly more tornadoes this weekend david barron npr news for earners