The nation’s deadliest spate of tornadoes in more than three years wasn’t over yet on Monday, May 19, with 100 twisters reported over five days and at least two more days of significant severe weather in store.
As multiple upper-level storms traversed a wavy frontal zone, the activity shifted from the Upper Midwest on Thursday, May 15 (31 preliminary tornado reports) toward Missouri into Kentucky on Friday (38), then reloaded across Colorado and Kansas on Sunday (31). The back-to-back outbreaks have put added stress on a National Weather Service already struggling to keep its offices staffed after DOGE-triggered budget cuts, layoffs, and early retirements.
On Monday morning, the NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center placed central and eastern Oklahoma and adjoining parts of Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas under a moderate risk of severe weather (level 4 of 5). Intense tornadoes are possible, but the setup is what forecasters often call “messy.” While there’s ample wind shear and unstable air in place to support tornadic supercell thunderstorms, the warm mid-layer level or “cap” that often keeps storms limited in number will be on the weak side. That means there could be numerous supercells, some interfering with each other and/or creating storm complexes that are more difficult to predict and track. Some areas may get hit by two rounds of fast-moving severe weather: one early-afternoon batch of supercells well ahead of a north-south dry line, and another by late afternoon and evening as the dry line and an approaching cold front head eastward. Cold upper-level air will help stoke the threat of giant hail.
Tuesday’s activity will be shaped in part by where remnant clouds and storms from Monday night end up denting instability. The biggest threat — flagged by NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center with an enhanced risk (level 3 of 5) — will likely be across southernmost Kentucky, western and central Tennessee, and northern Mississippi and Alabama. Models suggest the activity could again get off to an early afternoon start with plenty of storms, including some tornadic supercells, followed by intense squall-line segments that could produce embedded tornadoes and damaging downdraft winds.
The nationwide tornado threat is expected to downshift by Wednesday, with several relatively quiet days in the offing. Late May is still peak season, however, so pockets of severe weather could begin cropping up by the weekend into next week across the Southern Plains.
At least 24 killed in southeast Kentucky and the St. Louis area
The grim work of surveying damage was still underway in southeastern Kentucky on Monday, including the hard-hit towns of Somerset and London. At least 19 people were killed in the area by fast-moving late-night tornadoes, both of which were spawned by a remarkably long-lived supercell thunderstorm that emerged in southeast Missouri and hugged Kentucky’s southern border. The storm traversed hundreds of miles as it churned from west to east, spawning tornadoes along the way. Although this was undeniably a vicious storm, forecasters would also call it “well-behaved” in that it followed such a consistent track and remained powerful for hours on end.
Tornado watches were in place well ahead of the storm, and tornado warnings were issued by the National Weather Service office in Jackson, Kentucky, at least 25 minutes in advance for both Somerset and London. That’s no minor thing given that staff shortages have forced the Jackson office, much like several others nationwide, into closing its operations from 1 to 7 a.m., the first time in many decades that National Weather Service forecast offices have had to abandon routine 24/7 staffing.
Special arrangements will be made to fill the overnight shift when active weather is anticipated, and that was the case on Friday night, lead meteorologist Christian Cassell told WEKU, a public radio owned by Eastern Kentucky University.
“The big thing we want to stress is: If there’s weather, we’re staffed,” Cassell said. “Failure is not an option.”
The May 16-17 tornadoes were the nation’s deadliest outbreak since the bizarre, catastrophic tornado swarm of December 10-11, 2021, which took 89 lives, including 74 in Kentucky.
“I don’t know why this is happening to Kentucky,” said Gov. Andy Beshear in a Saturday press briefing.
In fact, there’s ample evidence that the nation’s focus of tornado activity has shifted eastward in recent decades, from traditional Tornado Alley toward the more densely populated mid-Mississippi Valley. Modeling that takes into account human-caused greenhouse gases suggests this trend will continue.
Read: Tornadoes and climate change: Any connection?
Earlier on Friday, a tornado rated EF3 plowed from the inner suburbs of Richmond Heights and Clayton across near-northwest parts of St. Louis around 3 p.m. CDT. Even for a city where tornadoes are a well-known threat — dating back to a catastrophic 1896 twister that took more than 250 lives in the area — this one stood out among recent strikes for its damaging track over and near many historic places, including Fontbonne University, Forest Park (site of the 1904 World’s Fair), the Harlem Tap Room, and Centennial Christian Church, where one person died. As reported by St. Louis Public Radio, “Penrose Street in north St. Louis was a sea of red bricks,” and the city’s mayor, Cara Spencer, said more than 5,000 structures were affected.
At least five people were killed and 35 hospitalized in the St. Louis metro area, with three other tornado-related deaths reported elsewhere in the state.
The next outbreak kicked off Sunday with multiple highly visible “landspout” tornadoes from a storm that tracked just east of Denver International Airport. Multiple tornadic supercells raked western Kansas and northwest Oklahoma by late afternoon, including the town of Grinnell, Kansas.
After most of the activity had died off, a straggler tornado supercell kept on going, passing dangerously close to the town of Greensburg (which was almost completely destroyed by an EF5 tornado in 2007) and striking the tiny town of Plevna in central Kansas around midnight. Low-light video revealed an immense wall cloud and what may have been a large wedge-type tornado at times.
Read: Portrait of a Kansas town that went all-in on clean energy after a devastating tornado
