It was only the second time in the National Weather Service's history that the agency labeled an approaching storm system as "high risk" more than 24 hours in advance. The other time was in April 2006, when nearly 100 tornadoes raked across the southeastern U.S. Both times, the early predictions were on target.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Forecasters who issued dire warnings ahead of last weekend’s tornado outbreak in the Midwest deemed the effort a success Monday, largely because dozens of tornadoes hit yet caused only a handful of deaths. But they expressed concern about future public complacency.

The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center issued a rare high-risk warning days ahead of the storms, sternly urging residents across several states to prepare for “life-threatening” weather. State officials and residents in communities where tornadoes hit praised the effort, noting only six lives were lost.

But many of the tornadoes touched down in rural areas, mostly in Kansas. Forecasters worried that could result in people tuning out future warnings because they were not in this outbreak’s path.

“The bottom line is there really is no such thing as a perfect forecast. There are always going to be areas that aren’t struck, especially in tornado outbreaks,” said Greg Carbin, the center’s warning coordination meteorologist. “But the penalty function for missing a significant event is so high, that there’s probably a tendency to err on the side of caution.”

It was only the second time in the National Weather Service’s history that the agency labeled an approaching storm system as “high risk” more than 24 hours in advance. The other time was in April 2006, when nearly 100 tornadoes raked across the southeastern U.S.

Both times, the early predictions were on target.

The storm center determined that 75 tornadoes touched down in Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Nebraska during a 24-hour period beginning at 6 a.m. Saturday. Six people died as a result of an overnight tornado that hit Woodward, Okla., about 140 miles northwest of Oklahoma City. No other deaths were reported.

Meteorologist Rick Smith said he hopes that for residents who prepared and were spared, that their work doesn’t lead to complacency.

“I don’t want people to think preparedness efforts are ever wasted,” Smith said. “The weather radios people bought, the plans people reviewed on Friday and Saturday, it’s not like you’re never going to use those again.

“If you didn’t use them on Saturday, you should be thankful and glad.”

In Kansas, the National Weather Service issued new warnings with strong language: “You could be killed if not underground or in a tornado shelter. Many well-built homes and businesses will be completely swept from their foundations.”

Some experts cautioned that using language that is too strong could have the opposite of its intended effect. Jeff Lazo, director of the Societal Impacts Program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, said people could actually go into “fear control.”

“Instead of responding to a threat, they just kind of tune it out,” Lazo said. “It’s not necessarily a rational response. It’s more of an emotional response. There comes a point where someone’s just going to grab a six pack and go to the roof because they don’t think they’re going to survive it.”

But the new warnings appear to have helped in Kansas. A tornado struck the Wichita, Kan., area at night and tore through a nearby mobile home park, yet no one was killed.

“It’s moving into the south side of a major metropolitan area after dark. This is when we want to pull out all the stops to really get people to visualize the potential of what could happen so they take the action to protect themselves from that level of threat,” said Mike Hudson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Kansas City.

Hudson said researchers plan to study how people reacted to the heightened warnings and whether that was responsible for many of them leaving the mobile home park and taking shelter elsewhere.

“They key point of it was that in that mobile home park alone, people did go ahead and take the proper actions to protect themselves,” he said.

Tornado, hurricane or flood, nursing homes are woefully unprepared to protect frail residents in a natural disaster, government investigators say.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tornado, hurricane or flood, nursing homes are woefully unprepared to protect frail residents in a natural disaster, government investigators say.

Emergency plans required by the government often lack specific steps such as coordinating with local authorities, notifying relatives or even pinning name tags and medication lists to residents in an evacuation, according to the findings.

That means the plans may not be worth the paper they’re written on.

Nearly seven years after Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans exposed the vulnerability of nursing homes, serious shortcomings persist.

“We identified many of the same gaps in nursing home preparedness and response,” investigators from the inspector general’s office of the Health and Human Services Department wrote in the report being released Monday. “Emergency plans lacked relevant information. … Nursing homes faced challenges with unreliable transportation contracts, lack of collaboration with local emergency management, and residents who developed health problems.”

The report recommends that Medicare and Medicaid add specific emergency planning and training steps to the existing federal requirement that nursing homes have a disaster plan. Many such steps are now in nonbinding federal guidelines that investigators found were disregarded.

In a written response, Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner agreed with the recommendation, but gave no timetable for carrying it out.

Nationally, more than 3 million people spent at least some time in a nursing home during 2009, according to the latest available data. Nearly 40 percent of them, 1.2 million, were in the top 10 disaster-prone states. The typical nursing home resident is a woman in her 80s or older, dealing with physical and mental limitations that leave her dependent on others for help with basic daily activities.

Investigators pursued a two-track approach. First they looked at the number of nursing homes that met federal regulations for emergency planning and training. Then they went into the field to test how solid those plans were, in a sample of homes drawn from 210 facilities substantially affected by floods, hurricanes and wildfires across seven states during 2007-2010.

On the surface, things appeared to be in good shape. Ninety-two percent of the nation’s 16,000 nursing homes met federal regulations for emergency planning, while 72 percent met the standards for emergency training.

A different story emerged when inspectors showed up at 24 selected nursing homes and started pulling files and interviewing staff.

The specific facilities in California, Louisiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas were not identified in the report. All had been affected by disasters; 14 had evacuated and the remainder sheltered in place.

A detailed, well-rehearsed emergency plan is a basic requirement for disaster preparedness. But at one home, the emergency plan was in several boxes. At another one, it was on a legal pad.

Of the 24 emergency plans, 23 did not describe how to handle a resident’s illness or death during an evacuation. Also, 15 had no information about specific medical needs of patients, such as feeding tubes and breathing equipment. Seven plans were silent on how to identify residents in an evacuation, such as by attaching wristbands or name tags. Inspectors said 15 made no provision for including medication lists.

None of the nursing homes met a government recommendation for a seven-day supply of drinking water if residents had to shelter in place and their regular source of water was unsafe or unavailable.

Twenty-two had no backup plans to replace staff members unable to report for work during a disaster.

Transportation was an Achilles’ heel. None of the nursing homes had planned to ensure transportation of adequate food and water for evacuated residents, while 19 had no specific plan for transporting wheelchairs and similar equipment. Twenty-two of the plans did not describe how the nursing home would transport medications.

Seventeen had no specific plan for working with local emergency coordinators to decide whether to evacuate or shelter in place.

Not surprisingly, administrators and staff from 17 of the nursing homes told investigators they faced substantial challenges in responding to the disasters that hit their areas. A common problem was that transportation contracts were not honored after an evacuation was called. Four nursing homes that did evacuate said they had problems trying to keep track of residents and supplies, in some cases temporarily losing patients.

The vulnerability of nursing home patients became a national issue when 35 residents of St. Rita’s Nursing Home just outside New Orleans perished during Katrina. Some drowned in their beds.

Prosecutors charged the owners of the facility with negligent homicide, saying they should have evacuated the home. But a jury acquitted them of all charges. Some jurors said afterward that Louisiana authorities should have taken responsibility for the safety of nursing home residents ahead of the monster storm.

A Houston Chronicle investigation found that, all told, at least 139 nursing home residents died during the hurricane or its aftermath.

The top 10 disaster-prone states, as ranked by historical statistics on major disaster declarations, are Texas, California, Oklahoma, New York, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Missouri.

National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., took the unusual step of warning people more than 24 hours in advance of a possible "high-end, life-threatening event."

WOODWARD, Okla. (AP) — The television was tuned to forecasters’ dire warnings of an impending storm when Greg Tomlyanobich heard a short burst from a tornado siren blare after midnight Sunday. Then silence. Then rumbling.

The 52-year-old quickly grabbed his wife and grandson, hurrying them into the emergency cellar as debris whirled around their heads at their mobile home park in northwest Oklahoma. They huddled inside with about 20 other people before the tornado — among dozens that swept across the nation’s midsection during the weekend — roared across the ground above, ripping homes from their foundations.

“It scared the hell out of me,” Tomlyanobich said.

The storm killed five people, including three children, and injured more than two dozen in Woodward, a town about 140 miles northwest of Oklahoma City. But it was the only tornado that caused fatalities. Many of the touchdowns raked harmlessly across isolated stretches of rural Kansas, and though communities there and in Iowa were hit, residents and officials credited days of urgent warnings from forecasters for saving lives.

When Tomlyanobich emerged from the underground shelter after the storm subsided, he saw a scattered trail of destruction: home insulation, siding and splintered wood where homes once stood; trees stripped of leaves, clothing and metal precariously hanging from limbs.

“It just makes you sick to your stomach. Just look at that mangled steel,” he said Sunday, pointing to what appeared to be a giant twisted steel frame that had landed in the middle of the mobile home park, which is surrounded by rural land dotted with oil field equipment.

The storms were part of an exceptionally strong system tracked by the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., which specializes in tornado forecasting. The center took the unusual step of warning people more than 24 hours in advance of a possible “high-end, life-threatening event.”

Center spokesman Chris Vaccaro said the weather service received at least 120 reports of tornadoes by dawn Sunday and was working to confirm how many actually touched down.

The storm system was weakening as it crawled east and additional tornadoes were unlikely, though forecasters warned that strong thunderstorms could be expected as far east as Michigan.

Woodward suffered the worst of the destruction from the storms, which also struck in Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. Woodward City Manager Alan Riffel said 89 homes and 13 businesses were destroyed, and bloodied survivors in the 12,000-resident town emerged to find flipped cars and smashed trailers.

Retired firefighter Marty Logan said he spotted the tornado when it knocked down power lines, causing flashes of light, and saw a radio tower’s blinking lights go black. He later saw a man emerge from a twisted, wrecked sport utility vehicle that had been tossed along the side of the road.

“The guy had blood coming down his face,” Logan said. “It was scary, because I knew it was after midnight and a lot of people were in bed.”

The state medical examiner’s office identified the victims as Frank Hobbie and his 5-year-old and 7-year-old daughters, who died when the tornado hit the mobile home park, and Darren Juul and a 10-year-old girl who died when the home they were in a few miles away was hit. Office spokeswoman Amy Elliot said no other details were available, but she said a critically hurt child was air lifted to a Texas hospital.

Authorities said a signal tower for Woodward’s tornado sirens was struck by lightning and hit by a tornado early Sunday morning. Police Chief Harvey Rutherford said the tower that was supposed to send a repeating signal to the town’s tornado siren system was knocked out.

Considering the tornado struck at night and the sirens were damaged, it was remarkable that there wasn’t a greater loss of life, Rutherford said. “We had the hand of God take care of us,” he said.

Frank and Treva Owens knew dangerous storms were moving toward Woodward, and although they didn’t hear sirens, the elderly couple was watching TV weather reports all day.

“I heard them say we had nine minutes and that’s when I hit the cellar,” Frank Ownes said, noting that the 12-foot by 12-foot shelter was prepped with their medications, food and clothing.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin toured the area by helicopter before walking through some of the town’s hardest hit neighborhoods.

“Getting the response out immediately throughout the community — it’s just remarkable what you have done,” Fallin told a group of emergency officials. “Once again that emphasizes how important it is to have a plan.”

In the tiny western Iowa town of Thurman, piles of toppled trees lined the streets in front of homes where missing walls and roofs exposed soaked living rooms. Longtime resident Ted Stafford recalled feeling his home shake, then hearing three windows shatter as the storm hit. He was amazed that no one in town was seriously injured.

“We’re all OK, fortunately. Nobody’s hurt. We can fuel this recovery with beans and coffee,” the 54-year-old said while standing on the broken concrete of what had been his home’s new basement foundation.

In Kansas, a reported tornado damaged McConnell Air Force Base and the Spirit AeroSystems and Boeing plants in Wichita late Saturday. Preliminary estimates suggest damages could be as high as $283 million in the area, where the storm also toppled a 65-foot Ferris wheel at a local amusement park.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback acknowledged that the damage could have been far worse, noting in an interview with CNN that residents appeared to have heeded safety warnings. “God was merciful,” he said.

Yvonne Tucker rushed to a shelter with about 60 of her neighbors at Pinaire Mobile Home Park in Wichita. She said people were crying and screaming, and the shelter’s lights went out when the twister hit. When they went back outside, they found several homes destroyed, including Tucker’s.

“I didn’t think it was that bad until I walked down my street and everything is gone,” Tucker said. “I don’t know what to do.”

Fellow mobile home resident Kristin Dean, who was pushed out of her home in a wheelchair, grabbed some possessions before going into the shelter, and she later learned that was all she had left. Her home was gone.

“It got still,” she said. “Then we heard a ‘wham,’ things flying. Everybody screamed, huddling together. It is devastating, but you know, we are alive.”

The deaths reported so far occurred in Woodward, Okla., where a twister struck the town early Sunday. Mayor Roscoe Hill said earlier lightning had disabled the town's storm warning system.

At least five deaths were reported following the swath of storms that ravaged portions of Central Plains states overnight and early this morning.

The National Weather Service has received reports of 122 possible tornado touchdowns in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Oklahoma, CNN reports.

Midafternoon, the forecast called for severe thunderstorms to continue into tonight in areas from southern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan to eastern Texas and Louisiana. The greatest tornado risk is for southern Minnesota, northern Iowa and northwest Illinois, according to the National Weather Service.

All five deaths occurred in Woodward, Okla., where a twister struck the town early Sunday. Mayor Roscoe Hill said earlier lightning had disabled the town’s storm warning system.

Two children were killed in a mobile home park, and one was still missing. Two adults were killed just outside of town, and details on the fifth death were not immediately known, according to Reuters.

In Iowa, officials evacuated the entire population of Thurman, a 300-population town, after a suspected tornado touched down and destroyed 3 out of every 4 homes.

The Storm Prediction Center, Norman, Okla., tornado prediction specialists, had said the storm system could be a “high-end, life threatening event” nearly two days before the storms were to hit.

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback told CNN on Sunday that the early warnings were “remarkably accurate” and people were prepared.

Tornadoes cut through south Wichita on Saturday, but didn’t cause any major injuries, according to the Kansas City Star. The storms caused significant damage to homes and businesses, though.

The Star reports that a preliminary estimate by city officials sets the overall loss in the area around $280 million.  

Reuters reports that the U.S. tornado season has started early, with storms already responsible for 62 deaths in 2012. 550 died in tornadoes last year, the deadliest tornado year in nearly a century.

The Youtube channel Severe Weather TV has posted a weather time-lapse “visualization,” that logs the time and place of every tornado, damaging winds and hail reports during the storm system.
   

Storms were reported in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

OMAHA, Neb. — Tornadoes were spotted across the Midwest and Plains on Saturday as an outbreak of unusually strong weather seized the region, and forecasters sternly warned that “life-threatening” weather could intensify overnight.

Storms were reported in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Oklahoma. Emergency officials in Iowa said a large part of the town of Thurman in the western part of the state was destroyed but no one was injured. A hospital in Creston, southwest of Des Moines, was damaged but patients and staff were not hurt.

And a reported tornado in Wichita, Kan., caused widespread power outages and other damage, including to housing and at an Air Force Base.

National Weather Service forecasters issued sobering outlooks that the worst of the weather would hit around nightfall, predicting that conditions were right for exceptionally strong tornadoes. Weather officials and emergency management officials worried most about what would happen if strong storms hit when people were sleeping, not paying attention to weather reports and unlikely to hear warning sirens.

When it’s dark, it’s also more difficult for weather spotters to clearly see funnel clouds or tornadoes.

“This could go into, certainly, to overnight situations, which is always of immense concern to us,” said Michelann Ooten, an official with the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management.

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., which specializes in tornado forecasting, said that the outbreak could be a “high-end, life-threatening event” nearly two days before the weather hit.

It was just the second time in U.S. history that the center issued a high-risk warning more than 24 hours in advance. The first was in April 2006, when nearly 100 tornadoes tore across the southeastern U.S., killing a dozen people and damaging more than 1,000 homes in Tennessee.

While there were no fatalities as of Saturday evening, storms were erupting faster than spotters could tally them all. The danger began Saturday morning when tornado sirens sounded in Oklahoma City around dawn.

One of the suspected tornadoes in central Oklahoma touched down near the small town of Piedmont and followed a similar path the one last May that killed several people, Mayor Valerie Thomerson said. Later in the day, several tornadoes were reported to have touched down in the northeast part of the state. Aside from damage to a camper, the chaos was minor.

More than 5,000 people who had gathered in Woods County, Okla., for a rattlesnake hunt scattered when a tornado touched down, said county emergency management director, Steve Foster.

In Iowa, Thurman — a town of about 250 people — was severely damaged by a possible tornado. Fremont County Emergency Management Director Mike Crecelius said that about 75 percent of the town was destroyed, but there were no injuries or deaths. Crecelius said the town was on lockdown and some residents took refuge in City Hall, which still had power. Officials and residents expect to start cleaning up Sunday.

In Creston, about 75 miles from Des Moines, the Greater Regional Medical Center suffered roof damage and had some of its windows blown out by a storm, said John Benson, a spokesman for Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management. No injuries were reported. Medical center officials were calling other area hospitals to determine how many beds they had available in case they needed to move patients.

The National Weather Service in Des Moines also received reports of high winds that toppled at least five semis on Interstate 29.

In northeast Nebraska, Boone County Sheriff David Spiegel said baseball-sized hail had damaged vehicles, shattered windows and tore siding from houses in and around Petersburg, about 140 miles northwest of Omaha. In southeast Nebraska, an apparent tornado took down barns, large trees, and some small rural structures. Johnson County emergency director Clint Strayhorn said he was trying to determine the twister’s duration and the damage it caused.

“I’m on a 2-mile stretch that this thing is on the ground and I haven’t even gotten to the end of it yet,” he said, walking the path of destruction near the Johnson-Nemaha county line. He didn’t immediately know of any injuries.

Two possible tornadoes were reported father south in Nebraska near the Kansas border, and as many as 10 others were reported in largely rural parts of western and central Kansas, including one north of Dodge City that was said to be on the ground for a half-hour, weather officials said.

In Kansas, a suspected tornado narrowly avoided Salina, meteorologists said. Another was on the ground for about a half-hour north of Dodge City.

Sharon Watson, spokeswoman for Kansas Division of Emergency Management, said there were reports of damage to housing in the southeast part of Wichita as well as at McConnell Air Force Base and Spirit AeroSystems.

Forecasters warned once Saturday night’s danger had passed, the threat from the storm system wasn’t over. Severe weather was also possible for a significant band of the center of the country on Sunday.

“The threat isn’t over with tonight, unfortunately. Severe weather is possible again tomorrow from east Texas and Arkansas and up into the Great Lakes,” said Bill Bunting, chief of operations at the Storm Prediction Center, which is part of the National Weather Service.
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Associated Press reporters Grant Schulte in Omaha, Neb.; David Pitt in Osceola, Iowa; Sean Murphy and Rochelle Hines in Oklahoma City; Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Mo.; Erin Gartner in Chicago; and Ed Donahue in Washington contributed to this report.

It was only the second time in U.S. history that the Storm Prediction Center issued a high-risk warning more than 24 hours in advance.

NORMAN, Oklahoma — In an unusually early and strong warning, national weather forecasters cautioned Friday that conditions are ripe for violent tornadoes to rip through the nation’s midsection from Texas to Minnesota this weekend.

As states across the middle of the country prepared for the worst, storms were already kicking off in Norman, Okla., where a twister whizzed by the nation’s tornado forecasting headquarters but caused little damage.

It was only the second time in U.S. history that the Storm Prediction Center issued a high-risk warning more than 24 hours in advance, said Russ Schneider, director of the center, which is part of the National Weather Service. The first such warning was issued in April 2006 before nearly 100 tornadoes tore across a large swathe of the southeastern U.S.

The latest warning covers portions of Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas. The worst weather is expected to develop late Saturday afternoon between Oklahoma City and Salina, Kan., but other areas also could see severe storms with baseball-sized hail and winds of up to 70 mph, forecasters at the Storm Prediction Center said Friday.

The outbreak could be a “high-end, life threatening event,” the center said. Cold weather from the west was hitting low-level moisture coming up from the Gulf of Mexico, and the difference in wind direction and speed was creating instability in the atmosphere that can spawn tornadoes, said Scott Curl, a meteorologist at the NWS.

“This is a very powerful weather situation,” Schneider said. “The environment is extremely favorable for violent, long-track tornadoes.

“The only question is when and where these storms will initially develop.”

With the worst storms expected in Oklahoma and Kansas, emergency management officials warned residents to stay updated on weather developments and create a plan for where they and their families would go if a tornado developed.

“We know it’s a Saturday and that people are going to be out and about, so stay weather aware,” said Keli Cain, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management. “Have your cell phone on you, keep it charged and make sure you’re checking the weather throughout the day so you don’t get caught off guard.”

People also should put together an emergency preparedness kit that includes a pair of boots, rain gear, flashlight, battery-operated radio, first-aid kit and a few days’ supply of food and water.

“It seems like it’s kind of a big deal this time,” said Monte Evans, a 42-year-old middle school teacher in Wichita, Kan., who said he planned to keep a close eye on the weather and take shelter in his basement with his wife and four children, ages six to 11, if tornadoes hit.

“But they always say it’s coming and then ends up somewhere else. You just do the best you can and get ready if it happens.”

Medical officials in Oklahoma warned residents not to seek shelter at hospitals or other public buildings, but rather to stay inside their homes in a basement or interior closet.

During a tornado outbreak last spring, hundreds of residents packed Oklahoma City hospitals seeking shelter from a violent series of twisters that killed seven people in Oklahoma and Kansas.

“We had people actually lining the halls,” said Michael Murphy of the Emergency Medical Services Authority. “Had we experienced a mass casualty incident, it really could have placed a strain on our resources.”

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Sean Murphy can be reached at www.twitter.com/apseanmurphy