2023’s tornado death toll is approaching the average normally seen in a full year

A fierce string of tornadoes ripped across the United States this past week, killing dozens and leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. 

Homes and buildings were reduced to rubble as twisters tore through wide sections of the South, Midwest and parts of the Northeast. Reports of people trapped beneath the debris of destroyed homes emerged in Alabama and Arkansas, while residents of a town west of Memphis said they woke up Sunday morning to find the local high school building in ruins. In Illinois, one person died and several others were hurt when a storm system hit the area on Friday night and caused the roof of a packed theater to collapse.

At least 33 people were killed in tornadoes that struck last weekend alone, with at least five more deaths reported in southeastern Missouri on Wednesday, after a tornado hit just before dawn, officials said.

The latest series of deadly storms brought the overall death toll linked to tornadoes to at least 63 people just this year, a spokesperson for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed to CBS News on Wednesday afternoon. That number accounts for tornado-related deaths recorded nationwide since the beginning of 2023, and it already comes quite close to the average U.S. death toll usually recorded over the course of 12 months.

“It has been unusually busy with tornadoes since the beginning of the year,” Jacqui Jeras, a meteorologist at The Weather Channel, told CBS News on Thursday, citing a fairly persistent upper-level weather pattern that is conducive to severe storms. Jeras suggested the uptick could be a consequence of La Niña, a set of climate conditions that refers to how cooler temperatures in the Pacific Ocean change global weather patterns.

“Our busiest tornado seasons are typically during La Niña,” she said.

Based on 30 years of data collected between 1993 and 2022, the average annual death toll linked to tornadoes is 71 people in the U.S., according to the National Weather Service. The agency’s Storm Prediction Center has reported the highest incidences of fatal twisters in Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Georgia, where the average death tolls are 14, eight, seven, five and five, respectively. Arkansas, Kentucky,…