The one that I heard in Severna Park years ago was certainly after dark. I'm just back from a short vacation in North Carolina. Not as bad as Alabama, but the April tornado outbreak still left some horrific damage which I saw driving through little Snow Hill in eastern NC and in the Glade Spring area along I-81 coming back through Virginia. Glade Spring's was a meandering tornado that did even more damage, and it debunks a myth that tornados don't form in hilly areas. A local chatted with me about it in a nearby fast food place. He was lucky but upset that his neighbors couldn't get FEMA help. He conceded that Alabama was worse off, but what I saw in Virginia still gives one pause at what a twister can do.

Apparently Donald never saw "Twister".

Was talking with a fellow old-timer today about tornadoes. He said that he can't remember hearing much about tornadoes when he was growing up in Maryland and that there seem to be more nowadays. Is he right or is he just having a memory blip? Has Maryland experienced more tornadoes in the last, say, 20 years?

FR: Hard to know for sure whether there are actually more tornadoes. But we are certainly hearing more about them, for a couple of reasons. First, with higher populations there are more people in more places to report funnel clouds and severe-storm wind damage (and more media eager to report it). Second, the NWS folks are pretty diligent about surveying damage and documenting whether it was caused by rotating or straight-line winds. I doubt they did that as much in the past. And third, it's only been since the 1980s that we have had Doppler radar networks capable of detecting the signature of wind rotation. That has led to the identification of tornadoes we probably would have overlooked previously.