CONTACT:  Patricia Viets                 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
                                         4/2/97

The National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., has placed a report on-line describing early-March tornadoes and flooding, the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced today.

"The severe weather from Arkansas northeastward through the Ohio Valley resulted in at least 60 deaths and over $500 million in damages," said the data center's Neal Lott. More than 13 inches of rain fell in Louisville, Ky., as a result of this storm system.

The new report includes a narrative discussion, rainfall amounts table and analyses, satellite images and movies (visible, infrared, water vapor, and enhanced AVHRR), and hyper-links to other sources of information. The World Wide Web address is:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/rcsg/marchflooding/marchflooding.html

The data center also has a Web page that provides access to numerous NCDC reports on severe weather events of 1993 -1997. These include the March 1993 "storm of the century," the summer of 1993 Midwest flooding, Hurricane Opal in 1995, Hurricane Fran in 1996, and a dozen other reports. The WWW address is: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/rcsg/weather-events.html