After the series of tornadoes that hit Missouri, Arkansas and Illinois on New Year’s Eve, I met up with some friends and told them I’d been working on the story. My friend J.D., from Alabama, responded “Tornadoes?! In December?!”
This, of course, made me realize that perhaps tornadoes in December are an oddity to some. So, I pitched the idea in budget on Monday morning of the next week, and there you have it. My story on the frequency of December tornadoes in Missouri can be read here.
It was fun to report on something that fascinated me as much as tornadoes do. Growing up in Texas may have had something to do with it, and of course ‘Twister’ the movie, but it was a topic I enjoyed researching. Statistics fascinate me, and I wandered through first-person accounts of some of the deadliest tornadoes on record in the United States. I learned a ton about what really goes into tornadoes, and the information that’s provided about them – a lot more than I learned from Twister.
The National Weather Services was, yet again, a great help and their website provided me with a lot of background.
