Terrifying Tornadoes

The tornadoes toll in the South. We’ll look at the aftermath and the climate science of what just happened.

It was weather for the history books in the American South last week. Death, destruction, and tornadoes on a scale that was hard to believe — unless you saw them.

Six hundred tornadoes in April. More than 300 in one 24-hour period alone, last week. Many, monsters. Huge. Plowing across Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, Kentucky.

Now, they’re burying the many dead — toting up the damage, looking out on whole neighborhoods and towns blown away. And asking, what happened here?

This hour On Point: the aftermath and science of last week’s savage storms.
- Tom Ashbrook
Guests:

Mark Strassmann, correspondent for CBS News.

Tom Grazulis, meteorologist and tornado climatologist and author of "The Tornado: Nature's Ultimate Windstorm."

Chuck  Faush, Chief of Staff to Mayor William Bell in Birmingham, AL

Harold Brooks, research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla.