In late April, a slow-moving storm over Texas and Oklahoma spawned an outbreak of 39 tornadoes. That event was just a fraction of the more than 400 tornadoes reported that month, the highest monthly count in 10 years. And the storms kept coming.

Through November, there were more than 1,700 tornadoes reported nationwide, preliminary data shows. At least 53 people had been killed across 17 states.

Not only were there more tornadoes reported, but 2024 is also on track to be one of the costliest years ever in terms of damage caused by severe storms, according to the National Center for Environmental Information. Severe weather and four tornado outbreaks from April to May in the central and southern United States alone cost $14 billion.

We will not know the final count of this year’s tornadoes until next year — the data through November does not yet include tornadoes like the rare one that touched down in Santa Cruz., Calif., on Saturday. That’s because confirming and categorizing a tornado takes time. After each reported event, researchers investigate the damage to classify the tornado strength based on 28 indicators such as the characteristics of the affected buildings and trees. Researchers rate the tornadoes using the Enhanced Fujita Scale (EF) from 0 to 5.

But 2024 could end with not only the most tornadoes in the last decade, but one of the highest counts since data collection began in 1950. Researchers suggest that the increase may be linked to climate change, although tornadoes are influenced by many factors, so different patterns cannot be attributed to a single cause.

The year’s worst storms

In May, a mobile radar vehicle operated by researchers from the University of Illinois measured winds ranging 309 to 318 miles per hour in a subvortex of a tornado in the outskirts of Greenfield, Iowa. The event, an EF4, was among the strongest ever recorded.

NASA tracked the line of destruction of the tornado over 44 miles.

NOAA estimated the damage caused by the Greenfield tornado to be about $31 million. While most tornadoes this year were not as deadly or destructive, there were at least three more EF4 storms, described by NOAA as devastating events with winds ranging from 166 to 200 miles per hour. These violent tornadoes caused severe damage in Elkhorn-Blair, Neb., and in Love and Osage Counties in Oklahoma.

Here are the footprints of 1,644 buildings in the United States that were destroyed or severely damaged by tornadoes this year, according to data from FEMA and Vexcel, a private company that uses aerial imagery to analyze natural disasters.

While losses from tornadoes occur on a regular basis every year, extreme events such as hurricanes can also produce tornadoes with great destructive capacity. In October, more than 40 tornadoes were reported in Florida during Hurricane Milton, three of them category EF3. According to the The Southeast Regional Climate Center, EF3 tornadoes spawned by hurricanes had not occurred in Florida since 1972.

A vulnerable region

Tornado detection systems have improved, especially since the 1990s, allowing scientists to count tornadoes that might have gone undetected in previous years, said John Allen, a climate scientist focused on historic climatology and analysis of risk at Michigan State University. That plays a role in the historical trend showing more tornadoes in recent decades.

While this year’s worst storms were concentrated in the Midwest, many counties across the South have seen an increase in tornado activity in the past 20 years, compared with the prior two decades. These same counties’ demographic conditions, including low incomes and large mobile home populations, make them especially vulnerable to major disasters.

“It only takes an EF1 to do significant damage to a home, an EF2 would throw it all over the place,” Dr. Allen said.

Prof. Tyler Fricker, who researches tornadoes at the University of Louisiana, Monroe, said we will inevitably see more losses in the region.

“When you combine more intense tornadoes on average with more vulnerable people on average, you get these high levels of impact — casualties or property loss,” Dr. Fricker said.

“If you have enough money, you can protect yourself,” he added. “You can build out safe rooms. You can do things. That’s not the case for the average person in the Mid-South and Southeast.”

The C.D.C. identifies communities in need of support before, during and after natural disasters through a measure called social vulnerability, which is based on indicators such as poverty, overcrowding and unemployment. Most counties in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi are both at high risk by this measure and have experienced an increase in tornadoes in the last 20 years, relative to the 1980s and 1990s.

In the states with the most tornadoes this year, most counties have better prepared infrastructure for these kinds of events.

Stephen M. Strader of Villanova University, who has published an analysis of the social vulnerabilities in the Mid-South region and their relationship to environmental disasters, said the most vulnerable populations may face a tough year ahead. While two major hurricanes had the biggest impact on the region this year, La Niña will influence weather patterns in 2025 in ways that could cause more tornadoes specifically in the vulnerable areas in the South.

Although not completely definitive, NOAA studies suggest that EF2 tornadoes, which are strong enough to blow away roofs, are more likely to occur in the southeastern United States in La Niña years.

“Unfortunately, a La Niña favors bigger outbreaks in the southeast U.S.,” Dr. Strader said. “So this time next year we might be telling a different story.”

Twenty-five years ago, a six-year-old boy named Elian Gonzalez appeared off the coast of Miami. He and his mother had been traveling by boat to the U.S. from Cuba. His mother didn’t survive the journey, but remarkably, Elian did. And almost immediately, his fate became the subject of an international debate: Should he stay in the U.S. and live with relatives in Miami? Or should he return to Cuba, to live with his father, who very much wanted him back?

How people answered that question tended to reflect a lot about their larger beliefs – about the benefits of democracy, the importance of family, the distinctions between the U.S and Cuba, and immigration writ large.

This episode was originally reported and produced by our play cousins at Futuro Studios. It’s hosted by Peniley Ramirez.

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AstraZeneca’s sales in China have been hit by the arrest of its country head, say company insiders, as local hospitals shun purchasing drugs from the company. 

Executives at the British pharmaceutical company expect to see an “evident” revenue hit in China in the wake of the arrest of its country president Leon Wang and several other senior executives, according to two people familiar with the matter. Sales of oncology products in particular — at the heart of Chinese authorities’ investigations — have been affected, the insiders said.

AstraZeneca declined to comment on the ongoing investigations, or to what extent they would affect its top line.

The detention of China’s most prominent pharmaceutical executive has sent shockwaves through the industry. Wang’s arrest came after scores of senior hospital officials were detained as part of a wider anti-corruption campaign that Beijing says is targeting the egregious costs of medical care. 

Wang’s arrest represents a dramatic reversal of fortunes for AstraZeneca in China, where it is the largest foreign drugmaker by sales. Wang had been celebrated by state media for his contributions to bolstering the domestic pharmaceutical and biotech sectors through start-up investments and building manufacturing capacity and research facilities. 

It is unclear at this stage how big a sales hit AstraZeneca will take, with the numbers coming in the company’s next financial report. But one executive told the Financial Times: “The sales impact is already very evident.”

AstraZeneca made $5.9bn in sales in China in 2023, 13 per cent of its total. Last month, it increased its full-year guidance for worldwide revenue and earnings growth.

“Doctors are unwilling to interact with our salespeople and prescribe our medicines. They will say our company has had too many issues and will opt for other choices, particularly Chinese-made drugs,” the AstraZeneca executive added. 

There are early signs that cancer drugs Tagrisso and Imfinzi have been particularly severely affected, they said. The company hopes that Enhertu sales could weather the crisis, according to one of the people familiar with its position, as it is considered the best drug on the market for certain types of breast cancer.

In recent financial reports, AstraZeneca has cited “strong uptake in China” following Enhertu’s commercial launch at the start of the year. Chinese authorities announced in late November — after Wang’s detention — that the drug would be included in the state health insurance scheme. 

Wang’s arrest caught AstraZeneca off guard. The UK leadership initially blamed the scandal on low-level employees in China, following news reports that several salespeople had been arrested for illegally importing cancer drug Imjudo.

Chief executive Sir Pascal Soriot, in an interview with Bloomberg News in September, said it only affected a “small number of employees” and that the company has “strong compliance policies”.

But then, in late October, Wang was arrested, as authorities started probing how much senior management knew about alleged wrongdoings about its sales practices.

“At first, Soriot thought it was just a few salespeople gone rogue out of several thousand. But he realised it was more complicated than that when Leon was detained,” said one person close to the chief executive. 

AstraZeneca leadership has received no formal explanation from Chinese authorities and has not been able to contact Wang, according to people familiar with the matter. The company has concluded that the probe is about Imjudo sales in China — where the drug is not approved — because authorities also detained AstraZeneca’s former head of oncology, Yin Min, who was in charge of the department during the alleged offences. 

“We haven’t received any explanation. We can only guess that it is related to Imjudo because of the other people who have been implicated,” said one person. 

Separately, AstraZeneca has also faced a public relations crisis after scores of salespeople were convicted over the past two years for medical insurance fraud. The courts found that they tampered with genetic test results to ensure lung cancer patients qualify for Tagrisso under a national insurance reimbursement scheme. 

Shares in AstraZeneca are down more than 8 per cent since the company disclosed Wang’s detention in late October.

Emily Field, an analyst at Barclays, said investors were particularly shaken because they had known Wang, who participated in earnings calls. But now she believes there is consensus that there was an overreaction. “No one thinks AstraZeneca is going to get kicked out of China. Maybe they get a fine in the low-to-mid single-digit billions of dollars,” she said.

Rival FTSE 100 group GSK was fined £297mn by the Chinese authorities in 2014 after a bribery scandal.

AstraZeneca has appointed Iskra Reic to manage the China business through the crisis, who is seen by Pascal as a “troubleshooter”. When she ran Europe for AstraZeneca, she had to deal with a disgruntled EU over vaccine manufacturing problems during the Covid-19 crisis. Soriot sees her as someone he can trust and hopefully a “fresh face” in China, said the person close to the chief executive. 

But company insiders in China have cast doubt on the ability of a foreign executive to navigate the political sensitivities during a period when the company is under such intense scrutiny from authorities. 

Company insiders are concerned about whether it can return to business as usual. One said: “It is very difficult to see a way out of this for AstraZeneca.”