"In the Wake of Wednesday’s Tornadoes"

NYTimes.com:

The violent storms that struck the South on Wednesday may break one of nature’s grimmer records. On April 3, 1974, 148 tornadoes touched down on a single day and left behind a trail of wreckage nearly 2,500 miles long. As many as 135 tornadoes were reported on Wednesday, wrecking homes, towns and lives.

As of this writing, nearly 300 people have been killed by the storms, 195 of them in Alabama. According to some estimates, the power outages could affect as many people as Hurricane Katrina did. ...

We cannot imagine the force those storms carried or the grief and destruction they left behind. We hope, as everyone must, that there will be clear weather following, giving Southerners a chance to mourn the lives that were lost and start the rebuilding.