Such is the nature of tornadoes: even large ones rain intense destruction on relatively smallareas. The one that ran from Tuscaloosa north-east to Birmingham was immense, 1.5 milesacross and 80 miles long, with winds exceeding 165 miles per hour. Parts of Alabama wereutterly ruined, but most of the state was untouched. More than 300 tornadoes tore throughthe region between April 25th and 28th, an unprecedented number. They killed around 340people in seven states, with the bulk of the deaths in Alabama. Not since 1925 have morepeople been killed by tornadoes in a single day, and not since Hurricane Katrina has there beena deadlier natural disaster in America.
龙卷风实质上是一种拥有强大破坏力的、小范围的空气涡旋。在塔斯卡卢萨县形成,一路向东北方向奔袭,席卷至伯明翰的龙卷风威力巨大,时速超过165英里,留下了一条宽1.5英里、长80英里的废墟带。亚拉巴马州部分地区完全被毁,但该州大部分地区未受到袭击。4月25日至28日期间,超过300场龙卷风席卷此地,数目空前频繁。龙卷风造成美国7 个州大约340人遇难,其中绝大多数位于亚拉巴马州。这是自1925年以来单日造成遇难者人数最多的龙卷风,也是自卡特里娜飓风之后美国发生的最为致命的自然灾害。
Craig Fugate, who heads the Federal EmergencyManagement Agency , says that comparingthe tornadoes to Katrina is comparing apples toorangeseach disaster is different, and yourespond to the disaster youre dealing with. As amatter of meteorology, Mr Fugate has a point.Katrina affected an area roughly the size of GreatBritain and made landfall six days after it formed.Tornadoes are smaller; they form and die morequickly. Gregory Carbin, the warning-co-ordinationmeteorologist at the National Weather ServicesStorm Prediction Centre, says that last weeks storms were of a once-in-a-century severity, andafforded some of those hit as little as 20 minutes warning.
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