Judson Jones, a meteorologist and reporter for The New York Times, covers extreme weather. And in the United States, a huge swath of land in Earth’s middle latitudes where the forces of seasonal change clash, that means he’s very busy. “We see every natural disaster hazard the earth can throw,” Mr. Jones said. “It all exists in the U.S.” And spring means tornadoes. A series of tornadoes killed at least 28 people in the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic this past weekend. Tornadoes touched down on the Great Plains on Monday. And at least 24 people died in a three-day outbreak in the South and the Midwest in March. Mr. Jones explained the tornado phenomenon in two phone interviews on Monday. He spoke to Times Insider from Oklahoma, where he was embedded with a group of researchers looking for tornadoes to study. The following exchange has been edited and condensed for clarity. There have been several deadly tornado outbreaks this year. Is this season notable for destructive storms? It’s severe-weather season. It happens. We’re running on average for the season, in terms of tornado output. What made the weekend bad is part of a continued trend of severe weather and tornadoes occurring in populated areas east of the Mississippi River. When you think of tornado research and the “Twisters” movie, you think of tornadoes happening on the Plains, right? Texas up to North Dakota; that’s how people coined the phrase Tornado Alley. But tornadoes can happen in any state, and lately we’ve seen a trend of violent storms in more populated regions. That’s what we saw on Saturday in Kentucky. We had a similar amount of storms on Sunday in the Plains. It was more of a traditional severe-weather setup, but there are going to be fewer deaths on the Plains, because there’s less population. What are the conditions that set up a tornado outbreak, and why do outbreaks so often occur in the spring? Spring is a transition season, and the earth is always trying to get into equilibrium. As we move to the summer season, warmer air is trying to push north, and cold air is still trying to push south. You get opposite air masses fighting each other for that space. There is a combination of warm, moist air coming out of the Gulf, dry air coming out of the Southwest and colder air coming out of the Northwest. This is combined with the jet stream, air around the altitude where planes fly that can have intense winds. All of these factors are fighting against one another. How unique is the tornado phenomenon that occurs in the center of the United States? Do such outbreaks occur in other parts of the world? The setup we have in the U.S. is kind of a perfect situation because you have that moisture from the Gulf and storms forming East of the Rockies. However tornadoes happen in the middle latitudes across the world. There are more across the U.S., but some of that has to do with the fact that we track them here. Is it right to say that meteorologists still do not know how, exactly, tornadoes form? Yes, believe it or not. Meteorologists still quite don’t understand the mechanism that triggers a tornado. Why does this one storm produce a tornado but another storm with the same conditions doesn’t? Meteorologists hope to find the answer, but they may not. Weather is chaos theory. That must be frustrating for forecasters. The good news is that since the 1990s, tornado warning times have improved. Outlooks have improved. Sometimes, we can see up to eight days ahead and say if there’s a good chance that tornadoes are going to form on that particular day. We have high-resolution forecast models that allow us to draw a circle around a couple of counties and say, “In this area, a tornado will almost definitely form.” So there is more lead time, but you can still have tragic situations, like the one that happened over the weekend. There are a lot of questions over how we continue to help people. One of the things that we’re doing at The Times is trying to give people a heads-up days in advance to say, “Hey, this is a day you should watch.” Our country is full of crazy weather. As a result, sometimes weather coverage can drift toward the sensational. How do you avoid that? I want people to read my work, but I also want the audience to trust me. I feel like the best way to give information is to act as a doctor would in an office. I want to give readers the most likely scenario, but also point out the outliers. Then I want to walk away, allowing people to make their own informed decisions.

Central and eastern areas of the United States face multiple rounds of severe thunderstorms on Tuesday and Wednesday that are capable of producing strong tornadoes, damaging winds and hail as big as tennis balls, forecasters say. On Monday tornadoes were reported in Nebraska and Oklahoma, and some residents in Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri and Texas were under tornado warnings overnight, according to the National Weather Service. The extent of the damage was not immediately clear early Tuesday. Bryan Smith, a lead forecaster at the Storm Prediction Center, said on Monday that tornadoes would still be a notable threat on Tuesday and Wednesday. “There’s the potential for a couple of strong tornadoes, centered on parts of southern Kentucky, western and middle Tennessee and into portions of northern Mississippi and Alabama,” he said. The Storm Prediction Center has highlighted a Level 3 risk, on a scale of 1 to 5, for severe weather in those areas on Tuesday. A broader area from northeastern Louisiana to Illinois, the west of the Carolinas and into northern portions of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi are under a Level 2 risk. Storms already active on Tuesday morning in parts of Kentucky, northern Mississippi and portions of Arkansas and Louisiana were expected to continue and grow stronger as the day goes on. Later on Tuesday, new thunderstorms are anticipated to form ahead of a cold front pushing through the region. Some of these will likely become supercells — powerful rotating storms that can produce tornadoes, large hail and damaging winds and can last for several hours. These may develop in parts of western and southern Kentucky, Tennessee, northern Mississippi and northern Alabama, according to the Storm Prediction Center. Farther north, a separate area of storms is expected to form in parts of Missouri, Illinois and Indiana by Tuesday afternoon. These storms could also bring hail, strong winds and possibly a few tornadoes. Some areas could see clusters of storms forming and merging, which would increase the chances of severe weather. The Weather Prediction Center has also warned that flash floods are likely, especially over portions of Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee, where the ground is already saturated from recent storms. The severe weather threat has been in effect since last week, as a storm system brings warm, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico northward into the central United States and cooler, drier air moves in from the west. This clash of air masses, combined with strong winds higher up in the atmosphere, has created an unstable environment — perfect for severe thunderstorms to form. Editors’ Picks Rocking Pink and Ready to Party A Long Life in Harlem, Made Possible by an Affordable Apartment Take It Outside! 24 Easy-to-Pack Recipes for Summer Picnics, Beach Days and More In Oklahoma, storms downed power lines, damaged at least 10 homes and destroyed a firehouse, the state’s Department of Emergency Management said on Monday. There was also flash flooding in parts of Oklahoma and Missouri late Monday.The threat of severe weather is expected to lessen on Wednesday as the storm moves toward the Atlantic. Still, a swath from eastern Virginia and eastern North Carolina, along the East Coast to the Florida and Georgia border, may still experience damaging wind gusts and possibly a tornado, before the storm system eventually clears. Beyond the middle of the week, forecasters expect a calmer period of weather. “A little bit of a more benign weather pattern will ensue across the lower 48,” Mr. Smith said.

Another fierce storm system hit the central United States this weekend, devastating many communities that are still reeling from severe weather just weeks ago. On Friday night, a series of tornadoes tore through the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions, killing at least 28 and injuring dozens more. Kentucky and Missouri were hit particularly hard, with 26 deaths occurring there. The storms are the latest deadly chapter in an especially brutal spring. In April, similar storms caused deadly flooding and more destruction, also hitting Kentucky and Missouri. The stretch of inclement weather comes as federal weather and emergency management workers struggle to keep up in the face of recent federal work force cuts. Here’s what to know about this storm system. ‘A continuous stream of storms’ This system consisted of supercells, or highly organized, longer-lasting storms that produce stronger winds and larger hail than typical thunderstorms. The supercells then spawned tornadoes beginning Friday afternoon around the system’s bull’s-eye, which was centered over parts of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. Government forecasters said on Saturday that a preliminary count showed that 26 tornadoes had touched down, mostly in Indiana and Kentucky. That number pales in comparison with the tornado outbreak during the April storms, which was 107, but officials in the bombarded states said that residents were still dealing with the damage from previous storms. “We’ve been under almost a continuous stream of storms,” said Chad Jenkins, the emergency management director for Brown County, Ind., where at least five people were injured. “It’s been a pretty turbulent spring for us.” At least 19 people have been killed in Kentucky since Friday, with 17 in Laurel County, one in Pulaski County and one in Russell County, Gov. Andy Beshear said. On Sunday, 10 people were still being treated at the University of Kentucky Hospital for injuries from the storm, and three were in critical condition, the governor wrote on X. One of those killed was a firefighter who was with the Laurel County Fire Department for 39 years, Major Leslie Leatherman. He was fatally injured during overnight tornado response efforts, according to a statement from the Fire Department. “This is a heartbreaking reminder of the dangers our first responders face every day and the incredible bravery they show in the face of disaster,” the department said in a social media post. The town of London, Ky., about 90 miles south of Lexington, was especially distraught. Neighborhoods in the small town near the Appalachians were covered in piles of debris, downed trees and personal items strewed over plots of land. Over the weekend, friends and neighbors surveyed the damage, sifted through the rubble and rescued people who were trapped under the wreckage. Kentucky has been pummeled in recent years by extreme weather, including several devastating floods, the most recent of which occurred in February. As much as seven inches of rain caused swollen rivers to overflow into communities then, including some that were still reeling from catastrophic floods in 2022, when at least 45 people died. Two dozen counties across the state had just been approved Wednesday for federal aid. The latest damage will add to an already precarious state of disaster relief efforts, as sweeping staffing and funding cuts have upended the usual processes for receiving assistance from the federal government. But on Saturday, Governor Beshear, a Democrat, praised the White House and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying they had “performed well” in response to the recent storms. Take It Outside! 24 Easy-to-Pack Recipes for Summer Picnics, Beach Days and More “Politics has no place in responding to natural disasters like this one,” he said. At least seven people died in Missouri, five of them in St. Louis. Two people were killed in Scott County, in southeastern Missouri, officials said. In St. Louis, Mayor Cara Spencer said at a news conference on Saturday that she would “describe this as one of the worst storms” in the city’s history. She added that early estimates showed that about 5,000 buildings had sustained damage. The storm started there around 3 p.m. local time on Friday and damaged an area of about 20 square blocks, according to the city’s fire commissioner, Dennis Jenkerson. Vivian Reed, a caretaker, said she had been looking after a 100-year-old client south of Forest Park all day on Friday. When she arrived home in the evening, branches and debris covered her yard, her grandchildren’s play cars had been crushed by trees and windows had been broken. “One second, it’s a beautiful sunny day,” Ms. Reed said. “And the next second, you look out and see all the devastation.” Also in the tornado’s path was the Centennial Christian Church, where three church members were trapped after the storm destroyed part of the building’s steeple. Two people were safely pulled from the wreckage, said the church’s pastor, the Rev. Derrick Perkins. But one, a longtime ministry leader, was killed, adding to the community’s grief, he said. In other parts of the country, at least two people died in Virginia as a result of the storms. In both cases, trees fell on the vehicles the people were in, authorities said. And in Indiana, more than a dozen people have been injured by tornadoes. After a short reprieve, more inclement weather is expected. For the next day or so, the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions could see a reprieve from severe weather, according to the National Weather Service. On Saturday, the storm system moved east, bringing a smattering of thunderstorms across New England before dissipating. But a separate storm system could bring more rain and thunderstorms to many of the same states, including Missouri and Kentucky, within the next few days — though at a less intense level. Still, golf-ball-sized hail and fierce winds could hit the southern Great Plains and parts of southern Oklahoma and northern Texas, including Dallas and Fort Worth.

On Sunday morning in a small Kentucky city, the sun shone and birds chirped. They provided an incongruent backdrop to a scene that looked like a war zone. Just two days before, a fierce tornado carved a 16-mile path of destruction through Laurel County, Ky., and in its county seat of London, the damage was clear: roofs ripped from homes, tree limbs sheared off, cars left as twisted hunks of metal. And several residents dead. By the afternoon, the Sunshine Hills neighborhood of London was filled with the cacophonous beeping of backhoes, accompanied by an army of faith-based volunteers. Those volunteers were among the many people in London, a city of 8,000 about 80 miles south of Lexington, who worked together this weekend to help not only those in need but also the whole community as it tried to process the disaster. Amid the grief and devastation, ensuring displaced people got the necessary supplies and assistance was top of mind for many. “It didn’t seem right to be sitting at home with our property being untouched with so many people struggling,” said Hannah Clark, who lives in neighboring Pulaski County but came to London to volunteer. The tornado was part of a storm system that tore through the central United States starting Friday, killing at least 28 people. Of those, 19 died in Kentucky, all but two in Laurel County. Outside of Kentucky, Missouri was also hit hard: Seven people died in that state, with five in St. Louis. Most of the victims in Laurel County were killed in Sunshine Hills, according to Gilbert Acciardo, a public affairs official for the county sheriff’s office, who did not give an exact number. Many of them were older, ranging in age from 50 to 70. Vanessa Mullins is one of the Sunshine Hills residents whose home was destroyed. Late Friday night, the sound of a thundering whistle rumbled through the hilly subdivision, she said, and she huddled in the bathroom with her son and her boyfriend. The house shook, shampoo bottles fell, dust fluttered from the ceiling — and then, quiet.

To keep the lights on in her residential mental health clinic outside of San Juan, Liomarie Oyola Pérez needs money. Ms. Oyola Pérez and her staff already go to extraordinary lengths during the blackouts that have become increasingly common in Puerto Rico, juggling three generators or waiting hours in line to get gas to power them. Her facility has solar panels, but she wants to add batteries that would store energy for use when the sun isn’t shining. For that, she needs a loan. This year, her lender was awarded millions through a federal program that would provide low-interest loans to candidates like Ms. Oyola Pérez. But the money is frozen, part of $20 billion committed to finance climate and clean energy projects that was abruptly halted at the request of the Trump administration. Several nonprofit groups that were promised funds have sued; a court hearing is scheduled for Monday. At stake is funding for projects across the United States meant to assist people like Ms. Oyola Pérez and reduce their energy costs while also cutting the pollution that is driving climate change. They range from efforts to add geothermal energy to affordable housing in Iowa to energy efficiency upgrades for a senior housing community in Massachusetts. Nationwide, the federal program could finance enough new solar arrays to power up to 2.2 million homes by 2031, according to a recent analysis from Energy Innovation, a research organization, and the University of New Hampshire. For months, the Environmental Protection Agency has been trying to claw back the money, which had been authorized by Congress under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act during the Biden administration. Since taking office, Lee Zeldin, the agency’s administrator, has repeatedly called the money a “green slush fund” and said it was vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse, though the agency has failed to produce evidence backing up those claims, despite a judge’s request. On the ground in Puerto Rico, 38 credit unions are waiting for $147 million committed under the program, which is known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. They estimate it would support 88,000 solar, electric-vehicle and energy efficiency projects by 2030. Contrary to Mr. Zeldin’s claims, these loans are vetted, supplemented by private capital and, for many recipients, are simply about keeping the lights on. When the electricity flickers off inside a mental health clinic run by Ms. Oyola Pérez, the staff follow a protocol: First, they wait two hours to see if the power comes back. Then, they fire up a gas-powered generator, then a second, then a third. If the outage persists, someone has to go wait in line for more gas, sometimes for hours. Inside the cheerful single-story building, where 22 residents include her aunt, her 106-year-old grandmother, and a shot-putter who competed in the 2023 Berlin Special Olympics, Ms. Oyola Pérez was clear about her long-term goal for avoiding blackouts. “The plan is to stay off the grid,” she said. Leaving the island’s notoriously rickety electric grid is the dream for many in Puerto Rico. Two large-scale blackouts have hit the island in the last six months, and the average resident lost power eight times last year. After Hurricane Maria in 2017, many homes were without electricity for months. Even without the threat of storms, local officials have warned that the power supply will not be sufficient to meet peak demand this summer. At the same time, Puerto Ricans have the fourth-highest electricity costs in the nation. The E.P.A. declined to comment for this article, citing a policy against discussing pending litigation. It took a six-year search for Ms. Oyola Pérez to find a loan with an affordable monthly payment to install the $75,000 panels for her solar system. After seeing an advertisement at Costco, she found a cooperativa, or a local credit union owned by community members, that could help. She installed the panels in 2023 and the savings on her electric bill now cover the full cost of her $697 monthly payments. In about 13 years, she would own the system outright. But the power outages haven’t stopped.

The call came late Friday to the Rev. Derrick Perkins: Three people were trapped in the Centennial Christian Church in St. Louis after a tornado had toppled part of its steeple, leaving it in dusty piles of bricks and stones. A signal from one person’s cellphone helped Pastor Perkins and emergency workers find those trapped inside. But one of the people, a beloved longtime ministry leader, was killed, Pastor Perkins said. “I was in disbelief — heartbroken,” he said, holding back tears. “Not only for the church, but for the entire community.” The grief and damage there is just a fraction of the devastation from several tornadoes that have ripped across the nation since late Friday, killing at least 27 people in Missouri, Kentucky and Virginia, and injuring dozens more. Mayor Cara Spencer of St. Louis said at a Saturday news conference that she would characterize the storm as “one of the worst” in the city’s history. “The devastation is truly heartbreaking,” she said. In Kentucky, the storm killed at least 18, a number that officials on Saturday warned could still rise. Gov. Andy Beshear said that he worried “there might be a whole block out there where everybody is dead.” “I hope that’s not the case, but you see five houses in a row, they’re just gone entirely,” he said at a news conference on Saturday. He added, “You have a lot of trauma coming out of this one.” The spring tornado season has been especially brutal in this part of the country, coming just weeks after similar storms caused deadly destruction in the region. On Friday, these tornadoes were caused by a major storm over the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic. By Saturday morning, government forecasters said they had confirmed 26 tornadoes in a preliminary count, with most of those occurring in Indiana and Kentucky. While that number so far is not the most recorded in a single day this year — there were 107 during a tornado outbreak on April 2 — states like Kentucky and Missouri were still recuperating from the damage from other storms this year. Laurel County, Ky., was hit especially hard, with 17 deaths recorded there. One person died in Pulaski County, and at least 10 people were in critical condition, according to Mr. Beshear. The ages of the victims ranged from 25 to 76, with most of them over 60, the governor said. Their identities were not released. The scene was particularly harrowing in London, a town of about 8,000 in the foothills of the Appalachians, where residents relish the trails and rivers that crisscross their forests. The town is also where, for the last 30 years, the World Chicken Festival has been held, in honor of Colonel Sanders, of KFC fame. At the London-Corbin Airport, hangars were left twisted and flattened. A plane was flipped upside down. Matthew Singer, the manager of the airport, said that no workers had been injured in the storm, but that several buildings had sustained immense damage. In residential neighborhoods nearby, plots of land were covered by dense mounds of wreckage, and scores of neighbors were helping to clear the debris on Saturday. On Miller Lane, Shirley Sturgill said she found her 90-year-old mother-in-law pinned on her couch and unable to move after a tornado ripped through. “I can’t even imagine everything in your home gone, and it looks like this,” Ms. Sturgill said, pointing to the destruction. “I can’t even imagine what these old people are going through.” This week’s storm also comes at a precarious moment for disaster relief efforts, as sweeping staffing and funding cuts have upended the usual processes for getting assistance from the federal government. Officials in both Kentucky and Missouri confirmed that they had been in touch with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Politics has no place in responding to natural disasters like this one,” said Governor Beshear, a Democrat. “And for the two events that we’ve already had this year, we’ve seen a White House and a FEMA organization that has performed well and has done what we’ve asked.” The tornadoes killed at least seven people in Missouri, with five of them in St. Louis. Two people were killed in Scott County, in southeastern Missouri, according to the county sheriff’s office. Mayor Spencer said early estimates showed that about 5,000 buildings had sustained damage. As sirens rang out on Friday in Forest Park, a nearly 1,300-acre public park that houses several of St. Louis’s cultural sites, workers quickly hustled visitors off the grounds and the handball court into a basement until the wind died down. By Saturday morning, light fixtures had been shattered, structures had splintered into pieces and some entrances to the park had been blocked by fallen trees. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Steve Burkhardt, the facilities and security manager for Forest Park Forever, which works with the city to protect the urban park, said that “it’s a whole different experience to see how beautiful the park is before and how it looks now.” When the storm swept into Virginia, two people died in separate instances after trees fell on their vehicles, according to authorities. This week’s severe weather hit at a time when the National Weather Service is facing staffing shortages, with nearly 600 people leaving the organization after the Trump administration ordered cuts. In Kentucky, where highly organized storms known as supercells spawned tornadoes, all three local Weather Service offices that provide forecasts and issue warnings have several vacancies for meteorologists. For example, the office in Jackson, which serves eastern Kentucky, usually operates with a staff of 14 meteorologists but is down to nine, according to Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the union that represents Weather Service employees. The office is also one of several left without an overnight forecaster, but on Friday, it stayed open and was sufficiently staffed for the night, issuing 11 tornado warnings. It was “all hands on deck,” Mr. Fahy said. On Sunday into Monday, a separate system could bring severe weather, including large hail and damaging winds, across the southern Great Plains and a slice of southern Oklahoma and northern Texas, including Dallas and Fort Worth.

An avalanche of fine particles rolled across northwest Indiana and north-central Illinois on Friday, turning day to night in an area of the country rarely hit by dust storms. A dark cloud suddenly brought near-zero visibility conditions on Friday afternoon to major highways, including Interstates 55 and 57 in Illinois, leading the National Weather Service to fire off a series of warnings about “dangerous, life-threatening” conditions on roads. As the wave of sifting dust blew into Chicago, it created a dramatic scene. Visibility dropped to a quarter-mile at Chicago Midway International Airport. “This is not common at all,” Zachary Yack, a meteorologist with the Weather Service office in Romeoville, 30 miles southwest of Chicago, said on Friday. Friday was the first time that the Weather Service office in Romeoville, which covers a large area that includes Chicago, had ever issued a dust storm warning for the city. Mr. Yack was working as the first warnings were being issued. Then the dust storm arrived at his office. “Visibility went from unrestricted to less than a quarter mile in less than 10 minutes,” Mr. Yack said. “It was a brown haze.” Dust storms can occur anywhere in the United States, but they’re most common in the desert Southwest and across the southern Great Plains, particularly in late winter and early spring. Deserts, overgrazed land and areas experiencing drought are especially prone to dust storms. Soils across central Illinois are exceptionally dry this spring, and dry soil is easily lifted up into the air by winds. “And it’s not just the topsoil that’s dry,” said Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center. “It’s going down a couple meters.” Mr. Hurley said the soil moisture in the area was at only 2 to 5 percent, making it among the driest ever. The Weather Service’s Romeoville office, which covers much of Northern Illinois and a sliver of northwest Indiana, has issued dust storm warnings for only one other weather event, which happened in 2023 in an agricultural area. That warning did not include Chicago. In the 2023 dust storm, seven people died in a crash involving 72 vehicles on Interstate 55 in central Illinois. Chicago was last affected by a significant dust storm during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, specifically on May 10, 1934, according to Rafal Ogorek, a forecaster with the Weather Service. Dust storms also affected portions of the Chicago metro area in April 1935 and on May 31, 1985. Mr. Ogorek noted that his office could not “find any documentation that suggested that either of those dust storms produced significant visibility reductions.” The dust storm on Friday formed near Bloomington, Ill., at about 4:30 p.m. local time when thunderstorms in central Illinois generated a push of whipping and howling winds with speeds up to 70 miles per hour. As the winds surged northward, they swept aloft dust from parched farmland. A dust storm generated by winds from thunderstorms is called a haboob, a term often used in the Middle East, where dust storms are common. Thomas Gill, a professor of environmental science and engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso, said it was appropriate to call Friday’s storm a haboob. Professor Gill said images and videos of Friday’s storm “show the classic appearance of a haboob” with a “wall of dust rolling across the land.” Traveling at about 60 m.p.h., the dust storm moved into downtown Chicago by about 6:30 p.m. Dan Belko, 51, who lives in the Old Town section of Chicago, said his wife got a warning about the storm on her phone just as they were stepping outside for dinner. “You could see the change in the atmosphere,” Mr. Belko said. “It looked like a fog, but not a very thick fog.”

The majestic Bayesian superyacht, which foundered last year off Sicily, killing seven people, was likely knocked over by an intense gust of wind and sank within minutes, according to a preliminary investigation by British maritime authorities. As the storm approached, a young deckhand on watch delayed waking up the captain and instead posted a video of the squall on his social media feed, the investigation found. The result was a fast-moving catastrophe — just minutes, from when the skipper was roused to the ship going down — in which the storm ripped apart a protective awning on the bridge, pushed the enormous yacht all the way over onto its side and sent passengers and crew members scrambling in the dark for their lives as water began to cascade through the cabins. “The findings indicate that the extreme wind experienced by Bayesian was sufficient to knock the yacht over,” said Capt. Andrew Moll, the chief inspector of marine accidents for the Marine Accident Investigation Branch, a British agency. “Once the yacht had heeled beyond an angle of 70 degrees, the situation was irrecoverable.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The report noted that the Bayesian’s signature feature, its gigantic single mast, one of the tallest in the world, increased the vulnerability of the boat capsizing in high winds. The New York Times published similar findings last year in its own investigation of the accident and found that the Bayesian was an outlier. All the other boats in the same series, from the same Italian manufacturer, had two masts instead of one. The company claimed that when operated properly, the Bayesian was “unsinkable.” Outside experts who read the government agency’s report also pointed to the mast and said that the overall stability of the boat — from its ballast to its superstructure — was questionable at best. “You have this obscenely tall mast, so the center of gravity of the boat is very high,” said Tad Roberts, a Canadian naval architect with decades of experience designing yachts. “The reality is that you’ve set up this system to fail.”Several passengers who survived the capsizing were badly injured before being dumped into the sea, the report said. One couple escaped their cabin by climbing on top of a set of drawers to reach the cabin’s door. With the boat turned completely on its side, that door was now a hatch in the ceiling. As the boat went down, crew members thrashed through the sea and helped save any passengers they could reach. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Seven people trapped below deck died: Michael Lynch, a British tech tycoon; his teenage daughter, Hannah; four of Mr. Lynch’s friends, including a prominent lawyer and his wife; and the sailboat’s cook. The report, released at midnight London time on Thursday, comes amid several simultaneous investigations. Sicilian prosecutors have launched their own inquiry and named the yacht’s captain and two crew members as suspects. British authorities cautioned that a fuller picture will emerge only after the Bayesian is lifted from its resting place in a cove 160 feet deep, just off the harbor of Porticello, a small fishing community in Sicily. Investigators want to inspect the hull, but the salvaging process that had started this month came to a halt last week after one of the divers died while working underwater. The basic finding of the report is that storm gusts striking the super-tall mast, which rose 237 feet, and its rigging, were sufficient to capsize and sink the vessel in minutes. The wind forces were powerful enough to knock over the yacht even though the sails were furled at the time, investigators found. Those calculations, with slightly different technical assumptions, closely follow a study by Guillermo Gefaell, a Spanish naval engineer, and one of his colleagues, Juan Manuel López, which was first reported by The Times. “The most important thing is that that vessel was not prepared to handle a wind of 60 knots or more,” Mr. Gefaell said in an interview on Wednesday, referring specifically to when the wind strikes the boat from the side, the sails are furled and the keel is up. “The crew could have done nothing. They did a lot, with the people that they saved.” According to analysis of the weather at the time of the accident, the winds likely reached speeds of at least 64 knots, or 74 miles an hour, enough to capsize the boat. The report also said that “tornadic waterspouts and downdrafts were possible.” The 10-page report is written in dry, technical language. Still, it delivers a sense of the impending doom. The drama began last June after Mr. Lynch was acquitted in a high-stakes criminal trial in which he was accused of fraudulently inflating the value of his software company when he sold it to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion. To celebrate his win, he organized several cruises on the Bayesian, a gleaming blue, 184-foot-long superyacht that drew stares wherever it went. The boat was registered in the United Kingdom, one of the reasons British authorities are investigating. On Aug. 14, according to the report, the Bayesian set sail from the port of Milazzo in Sicily. Twelve passengers and 10 crew members were aboard. The cruise was set to end on the morning of Aug. 19. On the last night, the Bayesian’s crew received warnings of thunderstorms and decided to motor toward Porticello, which lies on a sheltered cove. The Bayesian’s captain, James Cutfield, an experienced New Zealand skipper, told his deckhands to wake him if the winds increased above 20 knots, or 23 miles per hour. At 3 a.m. on Aug. 19, just a few hours before Mr. Lynch and his guests were supposed to get off the yacht and head home, the deckhand on watch saw thunderclouds moving closer, the report said. At 3:55 a.m., the deckhand, Matthew Griffiths, who is in his early 20s, recorded a video of the approaching storm and posted it to Instagram. He noted the wind had increased to 30 knots — 10 more than the threshold for waking the captain. At 4 a.m., he woke the captain. That began an intense scramble among the crew and guests. According to the report, the chief engineer readied the boat to maneuver into the wind, which would make it more stable. The captain rushed up to the fly bridge, from where he could steer. Angela Bacares, Mr. Lynch’s wife and the Bayesian’s owner, left her cabin and headed to the bridge to check if the taxis arranged for 8 a.m. that day would have to be canceled because of the weather. The wind suddenly increased, the report said, and before the captain had a chance to turn the boat in the right direction, it “violently heeled over to 90 degrees.” In the next few minutes, the superyacht sank. Several crew members were initially trapped underwater in air pockets but managed to free themselves and swim clear of the vessel. They then plucked passengers from the sea and pulled them onto a life raft, where they helped bandage wounds. The survivors were soon rescued by another yacht in the cove, an old, converted tugboat that weathered the storm just fine. An operating manual on board the Bayesian, called the “stability book,” did not contain critical data that the boat was dangerously prone to capsizing if it was struck by high winds while at anchor. In that condition, the boat’s guard was essentially down, with its retractable keel raised and engine vents open, which could let in water with the boat on its side. Investigators also found that the so-called “angle of vanishing stability” — the angle at which the boat can no longer right itself — was 70.6 degrees, far less than for many sailboats that can tilt all the way on their sides, to 90 degrees or more, and still recover. Mr. Roberts said the Bayesian’s design was “sadly lacking.” The Italian Sea Group, a shipbuilding company that bought Perini Navi, the makers of the Bayesian, declined to comment. A representative for the Lynches said the family wasn’t commenting either. The report made no mention of the manufacturer’s claim, repeated for weeks, that a large hatch on the left side of the hull had been inappropriately left open by the crew, allowing water to rush in and sink the ship. The report made it clear that the ship sank on its right side and that the crew closed a number of hatches when the storm hit. The family of Recaldo Thomas, the cook who died, known as Rick, said they were troubled by the findings. They said in a statement provided by their lawyer that the report outlined a series of failures — “failures in the design, safety certification and seaworthiness of the Bayesian, as well as the management by some of the crew.” The Thomas family said that they “firmly believe that Rick died doing his job, and that his death was preventable.”

A National Weather Service office in eastern Kentucky was scrambling to cover the overnight forecast on Friday as severe storms were moving through much of the eastern United States, according to the union that represents the department’s meteorologists. Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the union that represents Weather Service employees, said the office in Jackson, Ky., was one of four that no longer had a permanent overnight forecaster after hundreds of people left the agency as a result of cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency, the initiative led by Elon Musk that is reshaping the federal bureaucracy. Mr. Fahy said on Friday that because of the threat for flooding, hail and tornadoes facing eastern Kentucky, the Weather Service had to find forecasting help for the office. A spokeswoman for the Weather Service said the Jackson office would be relying on nearby offices for support through the weekend. Multiple rounds of storms passed through eastern Kentucky on Friday morning and afternoon, and the overnight hours were expected to be stormy. A line of thunderstorms was forecast to sweep the region overnight, whipping up damaging winds and large hail. There is also a chance for isolated supercells, long-lasting storms that can deliver even stronger winds and bigger hail than typical thunderstorms and also generate tornadoes. Much of Kentucky, including a portion of the eastern section, is within the bull’s-eye of an area under what the Storm Prediction Center calls a “moderate” threat — a four out of five in its levels of risk — of severe thunderstorms. “It’s very rare that we see a moderate risk in our area, so I think people are aware,” said Jane Marie Wix, a meteorologist at the Weather Service office in Jackson. By late Saturday morning, quieter weather and drier conditions are expected and will most likely continue into Sunday morning, before a chance for additional storms arrives close to the borders of Virginia and Tennessee by the middle of the day. It is not unusual for a forecasting office to rearrange staff members for extreme weather. But until recently, most would have at least two or three people scheduled around the clock. Three other offices, in northwestern Kansas, Sacramento and Hanford, Calif., also no longer have forecasters overnight, Mr. Fahy said, and four more, in Cheyenne, Wyo., Marquette, Mich., Pendleton, Ore., and Fairbanks, Alaska, are days away from the same fate. “For most of the last half century NWS has been a 24/7 operation — not anymore,” Mr. Fahy said. Nearly 600 people have left the Weather Service in recent months, through a combination of layoffs and retirements, after the Trump administration demanded that it and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, make significant cuts. The Weather Service’s 122 forecasting offices have traditionally operated 24 hours a day, with each one responsible for monitoring the weather in its region. Because of the staffing cuts, some offices have also curtailed the twice-daily launches of weather balloons that collect data that fuels daily forecasts and forecast models. An agreement last month between the Weather Service and its employees’ union warned of “degraded” services as more people leave, and five of the department’s former directors recently wrote an open letter saying they feared the cuts had been so deep that lives would soon be endangered. Kim Doster, a spokeswoman for NOAA, confirmed this week that “several local NWS offices are temporarily operating below around-the-clock staffing.” Editors’ Picks Rocking Pink and Ready to Party A Long Life in Harlem, Made Possible by an Affordable Apartment Take It Outside! 24 Easy-to-Pack Recipes for Summer Picnics, Beach Days and More She said the Weather Service “does not anticipate a significant impact in services as we work to mitigate potential impacts and direct other regional offices to provide additional support.” The Weather Service has scrambled recently to reorganize staffing, sending forecasters to the offices most deeply affected by the losses. Balloon launches resumed in Omaha after the Nebraska congressional delegation announced that it had persuaded the White House to restore some of the staffing that had been lost there.

The daffodils have peaked in Central Park, and the Yankees and Mets are weeks into their seasons. Spring is in full swing across New York City, but the usual warm, sunny weather that leads people to mob the streets and outdoor cafes at this time of year has yet to arrive. The rain just keeps coming. “There have only been four days that we haven’t gotten any rain in the month,” said Jim Connolly, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. In the first two weeks of May, the gauge in Central Park has recorded at least a trace amount of rain on 10 days. The rain has been light and drizzly most days, lending the city a swampy, gray vibe. On Wednesday, heavier showers led to a recorded 1.22 inches of rain. And yes, it rained again on Thursday, ever so slightly: LaGuardia Airport received a sprinkling, and John F. Kennedy International Airport 0.01 inches. All the rain has added up, with 4.17 inches measured since the start of the month, as of 4 p.m. on Thursday. The amount is a lot when you consider that the city records about four inches across the entire month in a typical May, but is not extreme when compared with the rainiest May ever (10.24 inches in 1989). There’s not much of an end in sight. Thunderstorms are in the forecast for Friday and Saturday. Sunday into early next week could offer some relief, but Mr. Connolly said another storm could arrive as early as Wednesday. The soggy weather is starting to get people down. Clement Oladipo works outdoors as a backyard gardener in Brooklyn and Manhattan. “I don’t want to say I hate the rain because it’s obviously good for the plants,” he said. “But it’s an inconvenience.” Spring is the busiest season for Mr. Oladipo’s company, the Bed-Stuy Garden Guy, as people begin to spend more time outside. Typically, he reschedules when it rains. “It’s a lot more work going in and out of the house when it’s wet, and you’re dragging wet bags into the house,” he said. “There’s so much cleanup that you have to do after.” This year, there have been far too many rainy days to reschedule, and he’s working through the wet weather. “It’s not the end of the world,” he said.