Don't Succumb to Tornado Fatigue: This Historic Disaster Is Still Unfolding

This tornado season is one for the ages. Just two days ago, I wrote the following:

It's far from over, and the 2011 tornado season is already the most destructive and deadliest in decades. From April 14 to 16, the largest tornado outbreak in world history tore across the Southeast. Two weeks later, that record was shattered by the April 25-28 Super Outbreak. Then Sunday night, the deadliest single tornado since the 1950s utterly obliterated the small Missouri city of Joplin.

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Since then, the Joplin tornado was proven to be just the start of another incredible outbreak, with 153 tornadoes officially recorded over a four-day stretch. This figure doesn't even include those that struck yesterday. And, unfortunately, there are more expected today. (For the best ongoing coverage and analysis of these extreme weather events, I highly recommend following the Weather Underground's severe weather blog.)

This incredible satellite video from NOAA shows all of the vortexes throughout April as red dots. Watch the historically unprecedented month unfold:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMFMavfxPRI&feature=player_embedded

And here's another look at the April 25-28th "Super Outbreak."

For any concern and conscientious soul, it's hard to mentally and emotionally put the pieces together of these connected, but distinct, disasters.

There's the climate change question, of course, which has been answered unsatisfyingly dozens of times already. Short answer: we don't really know. It's complicated.

Two essential reads on this subject are Andrew Freedman's take on the Capitol Weather Gang blog, and Joe Romm's on ClimateProgress, in which he concludes:

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1. When discussing extreme weather and climate, tornadoes should not be conflated with the other extreme weather events for which the connection is considerably more straightforward and better documented, including deluges, droughts, and heat waves.
2. Just because the tornado-warming link is more tenuous doesn’t mean that the subject of global warming should be avoided entirely when talking about tornadoes.

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In other words, it'd be irresponsible to make a straightforward connection between tornadoes and climate change. But it'd also be irresponsible not to discuss the potential for a connection and to work to better understand that potential.

More pressing, in my opinion, than the climate connection is the concept of "tornado fatigue" that I worry is spreading across the nation. Maybe it's a more general "disaster fatigue," one that is quelling in Americans our natural "what can I do to help? impulse.

After the first outbreak, and then after the massive and widely-broadcast Tuscaloosa vortex, there was an outpouring of support. We, for instance, gathered dozens of ways to help the victims into a post to help guide the generous public, and donations poured in to the likes of the Red Cross and Portlight.org and others.

But the unfortunate, if understandable, reality is that the public gives generously to unique disasters, or to ones that come after longer disaster-free stretches. The fourth tornado outbreak doesn't tend to grab the public's attention as much as the first and second.

Donor fatigue is a long-recognized phenomenon, but I'm not talking only about financial giving. There's also volunteer time and energy that is being sapped. And, no less important, there's the attention that a disaster gets.

Of course, the residents of Piedmont, Oklahoma who were left homeless from Tuesday night's vortex are no less victims than those in Tuscaloosa or Joplin, even though "only" nine people died and one child went missing. But tell me: did you know that a tornado struck Piedmont, Oklahoma?

I don't have any answers here. I'll point again to our "How to Help" post, as most of those organizations are working now on multiple disasters and need the support more than ever.

But more than anything, I just want to make sure that we're all still paying attention.