Extreme Weather Events Unprecedented, Scientists Say (Randolph E. Schmid)

Government weather researchers said yesterday that, while similar extremes have occurred throughout modern American history, never before have they occurred in a single month, as they did in April.

The last time anything remotely like it happened was the spring of 1927, which also had many tornadoes and flooding, said Harold Brooks of the Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma.

The tornado outbreak, floods, and drought during April were comparable to extreme events in the past, but never so close together in recorded history, agreed Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring branch at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.