America’s Coming Public Health Crisis

In 1881, after studying nearly a century of weather patterns, an Army meteorologist named John Park Finley came up with a simple way to understand when tornadoes were likely to happen—observing a combination of low air pressure, high temperatures, and increasing wind velocity. This pattern could successfully predict 95 percent of all tornadoes with hours of time to get the word out. It was a game changer in preparing for tornadoes, which could wreak enormous havoc. Take the Tri-State Tornado, for instance.