Tornados

The blaze burned so furiously on July 26 that it created a “fire whirl.” The twirling tower of flame reached speeds of 143 mph (230 kph), which rivaled some of the most destructive Midwest tornados.

Forecasters now are able to predict bad weather better than ever with a modern set of tools, including satellite data, high altitude balloons, radar stations and computer models, but for tornados, the false alarm rate has hovered about 75 percent for decades.