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Spectacular weather made the decision easy about the weekending Story of the Day. All three newscasts led with the line of storms that stretched from Texas to Tennessee, spawning two dozen tornadoes, leaving seven people dead. ABC and CBS had reporters on the scene in Texas; NBC's was in Missouri. All three newscasts ran plenty of videotape of fierce funnel clouds. The northern end of the front was in South Dakota, where temperatures dropped 40F in 24 hours, ending with a May blizzard and 24 inches of snow.

"This massive storm powered its way right up Tornado Alley," narrated NBC's Janet Shamlian, with hurricane-force winds and giant hailstones. ABC's Mike von Fremd (embargoed link) showed us freight cars pushed off the railroad track in Missouri. He called 2008 "an incredibly violent year for tornadoes" and warned that typically May is the most violent month of all. CBS' Hari Sreenivasan offered the statistics: 2007 saw 517 twisters in its first four months; 2008 has seen 708.


Andrew Tyndall 5/5/08 6:56:39 pm

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