GREENFIELD, Iowa (AP) — An undisclosed number of people were killed when a tornado tore through a small town in Iowa, leaving a wide swath of obliterated homes and crumpled cars and also twisting and toppling wind turbines outside of the town.
After devastating Greenfield, a town of 2,000, on Tuesday the storms moved eastward to pummel parts of Illinois and Wisconsin, knocking out power to tens of thousands of customers in the two states.
The deadly twister that slammed Iowa came amid a historically bad season for tornadoes in the U.S. at a time when climate change is heightening the severity of storms around the world. April had the second highest number of tornadoes on record in the U.S. Through Tuesday, there have been 27% more tornadoes in the country than average. The preliminary count for this year of 859 is the highest since 2017 and is significantly more than the average of 676 through May 21, according to NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. Nearly 700 of the tornadoes have been in April and May.




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