Tornado

The tornado that ripped through Harrisburg, Ill. overnight Wednesday has been labeled an EF4, among the strongest of five categories with winds in excess of 166 mph. Jayson Wilson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Paducah, Ky., said weather conditions lined up perfectly to generate a series of tornadoes that touched down in southern Illinois, Missouri and western Kentucky. The storms killed six people in Harrisburg, and three died in Missouri, where a strong tornado plowed through the music resort city of Branson.

Much of the post-tornado rubble has been removed from Joplin, Mo. But for the city's residents, a six-mile scar of house foundations and turned-up dirt serves as a raw and sorrowful reminder of the epic twister that killed 161 people and destroyed thousands of homes as it swept through around dinner time May 22. While the community struggles to rebuild, a flap is playing out on Facebook over a map created by the local tourism agency that points...

From Tuscaloosa, Ala. — Cecil Hurt agreed to drive the rental through the tornado zone. It was his town. These were his tears. His daddy played football in the 1950s for "Ears" Whitworth, famous now only for being Alabama's coach before Bear Bryant. Hurt is a sports columnist for the Tuscaloosa News, but what ripped through his city April 27 made everyone chroniclers, first responders and teammates. The tornado struck shortly after 5 p.m. and roared, a mile wide in some spots, four miles from the city's southwest corner to its northeast tip. Hurt watched it touch down from his porch.

In the 12 weeks since the tornado ravaged Joplin, there's been a time for everything: A time to look for the survivors, and then a time to look for the dead. A time to pile up the ruins of homes, and then a time to clear them away. On Wednesday, in one of the most emotional milestones on this city's road back from a catastrophe that killed 160 people and damaged or destroyed almost 8,000 homes and businesses, it will be time for thousands of the city's children to get back to school.

The Mobile Meteorological Measurement Vehicle — a worn-looking '90s-model Dodge Intrepid with classic rock on the radio, a tower of weather gauges attached to its roof and a laptop computer bolted to its dash — crested a rolling hill on its way to tiny Hackleburg, Ala. "There it is," said Kevin Knupp, a University of Alabama-Huntsville atmospheric sciences professor, tapping the window. To the left, a swath of pine and oak leaned northeast, like a curve of toppled dominoes, while to the right, far off, trees lurched the other way — all pushed over by the counterclockwise swirl of a huge tornado.

Some survivors of last month's massive tornado that destroyed much of Joplin, Mo., are facing another indignity: an outbreak of a rare but frequently lethal fungal infection. Eight people have been confirmed to have the infection, known as murcomycosis, and at least three have died, according to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. Health authorities fear other tornado victims may also be infected without realizing it. "People who have wounds that are not improving should seek medical attention immediately," said Dr. Benjamin Park, a medical officer in the mycotic disease branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which monitors outbreaks of fungal infections.

As if Joplin residents didn't have enough problems in the wake of last month's tornado that destroyed large segments of the town, a physician in the Missouri community says that some of the survivors are confronting a potentially lethal fungus infection. At least nine survivors of the tornado have contracted the infections, and a third of them have died -- although it is not clear if the fungus is the cause of death -- Dr. Uwe Schmidt of the Freeman Health System told the Springfield News-Leader.

Question: What are the prospects for my shares of Allstate Corp.? Are its television commercials helping or hurting the company? Answer: Losses from tornadoes and mortgage-backed securities are of much greater concern to Allstate than is the response to its commercials about potential mayhem. Tornadoes in the South, for example, were a primary contributor to the company's estimated $1.4 billion in catastrophic losses in April. That nearly equals its total catastrophic losses for all of last year.

This isn't Missouri, where TV news stations show the wreckage left by the tornado that roared through Joplin. It isn't Alabama, where a deadly twister tore through Tuscaloosa five weeks ago. But it might as well have been for Mary Talley, who watched in agony Thursday as her family's home was laid bare for all to see, from the laundry basket in the bedroom to her son's black pastoral robe. Few of the stunned onlookers snapping pictures of the spectacle took notice of Talley, leaving the tiny 73-year-old woman with a cane to quietly grieve for the yellow house that was reduced to ruins by a tornado that left a swath of Massachusetts in shambles.