(NYT) – The tornado screeching across southern Ohio on Monday night triggered a cellphone alert that roused Rich Schlarman. He ignored it. Then came another. That was enough to persuade him to hurry his 83-year-old mother toward the basement. “We only made it down about four steps when I heard a loud boom,” Mr. Schlarman said. “If we hadn’t made it down as far as we had, we would probably not have made it.” On Tuesday, his home was a shambles: walls bent, doors tilted, the roof gone — another house
crippled amid a stretch of severe weather that has tormented communities from the Rocky Mountains to the Mid-Atlantic in recent weeks. Now the severe weather had come to Celina, a city of about 10,000 people about 60 miles northwest of Dayton, causing the kind of devastation that has left state after state with ruined buildings and grieving families this spring. n the last week alone, the authorities have linked tornadoes to at least seven deaths and scores of injuries. Federal government weather forecasters logged preliminary reports of more than 500 tornadoes in a 30-day period — a rare figure, if the reports are ultimately verified — after the start of the year proved mercifully quiet. READ MORE
