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Portal:Weather/On this day list/May

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May 1

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2010: Record flooding began in Tennessee, eventually killing 16 people.

May 2

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2008: Cyclone Nargis made landfall in Myanmar, killing more than 146,000 people.

1999: The second costliest tornado outbreak in history hit the area around Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, including an F5 tornado that destroyed thousands of homes and killed 36 people.

May 4

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2007: A three-day tornado outbreak featuring more than 100 tornadoes began across a large area of the Central United States. One tornado destroyed 95% of the town of Greensburg, Kansas, and was the first tornado ever rated EF5.

May 5

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1950: Known locally as "Black Friday", heavy precipitation caused the already swollen Red River to breach several dikes, causing disastrous flooding in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

May 6

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1975: An F4 tornado struck Omaha, Nebraska, causing more than $1 billion (1975 USD) in damage.

May 7

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1840: The Great Natchez Tornado struck Natchez, Mississippi, killing at least 317 people.

May 8

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1995: More than 20 inches (510 mm) of rain in just 12 hours caused major flooding in southern Louisiana, causing more than $1 billion in damage.

May 9

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1785: James Pollard Espy a prominent early meteorologist who pioneered theories of atmospheric convection, was born in Pennsylvania.

May 10

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1997: Maeslantkering, the largest movable storm surge barrier in the world, opened in the Nieuwe Waterweg, Netherlands.

May 11

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1953: An F5 tornado destroyed areas of downtown Waco, Texas, killing 114 people.

May 12

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1948: A Douglas DC-4 crashed while flying into a thunderstorm near Libenge, Congo, killing 31 of the 32 aboard.

May 13

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1980: A strong tornado devastated downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan.

May 14

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1991: The NOAA-12 weather satellite was launched into a polar orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

1896: The first tornado of a deadly sequence of tornado outbreaks killed 73 people in North-Central Texas.

May 16

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2004: Typhoon Nida reached category 5 intensity just east of the Philippines.

May 17

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2003: Ratnapura, Sri Lanka, recorded 366.1 millimetres (14.41 in) of rain in just 18 hours from a tropical cyclone that caused some of the worst flooding on the island in its history.

May 18

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1986: Cyclone Namu, the worst tropical cyclone ever to affect the Solomon Islands, killed 150 people as it passed through the island nation.

May 19

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2018: Cyclone Sagar struck northwestern Somalia, killing 56 people in three countries. It was the strongest tropical cyclone on record to strike Somalia.

May 20

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2010: Cyclone Laila made landfall in Andhra Pradesh, India, killing 65 people.

May 21

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1953: A deadly tornado killed 2 people in Port Huron, Michigan, and crossed the St. Clair River into Canada where it killed 4 more people in Sarnia, Ontario.

May 22

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2011: A violent tornado killed 158 people and destroyed much of the city of Joplin, Missouri. This was the most people killed by a single tornado in the United States since the beginning of official tornado forecasts in 1950.

May 23

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1917: Edward Lorenz, meteorologist and original founder of the field of chaos theory, was born in West Hartford, Connecticut.

May 24

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2006: The GOES 13 weather satellite was launched. Part of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite program, GOES 13 would provide public weather forecasting data to the United States until its retirement in 2018, when it was transferred to the United States Air Force.

May 25

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2018: Cyclone Mekunu made landfall near Salalah, Oman, killing 31 people. It was the strongest tropical cyclone to strike the Arabian Peninsula on record.

May 26

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1972: Subtropical Storm Alpha reached peak intensity east of Savannah, Georgia, where it would make landfall the next day.

May 27

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1774: Francis Beaufort, inventor of the Beaufort scale for measuring wind force, was born in Ireland.

May 28

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1941: After searching for several hours, the German weather ship Sachsenwald recovered two survivors from the sinking of the battleship Bismarck

May 29

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1995: A destructive tornado struck western Massachusetts, killing three people in the town of Great Barrington.

May 30

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1959: Tropical Storm Arlene made landfall near Lafayette, Louisiana, bringing more than 10 inches (25 cm) of rain to parts of the northern Gulf Coast of the United States.

May 31

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1889: The Johnstown Flood, caused by days of heavy rains which led to the failure of the South Fork Dam, killed more than 2,000 people in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.